The Test

It has been a crazy few years. I left my husband because of financial and sexual issues. I moved out, moved on, and met someone else who was financially secure and sexually rocked my world. It was a crazy whirlwind romance that seemed almost too good to be true. And it was. We had ups and downs and chemistry and passion but in the end, the secrets, lies and emotional abuse won out.

My 20 year marriage officially and legally ended. I wound up with little from the divorce. My ex-husband moved his girlfriend and her kids into my old house. And soon after, I got laid off and lost my job. I applied for job after job in my field, but wasn’t the chosen candidate. My youngest daughter decided she preferred her dad’s house because I wasn’t “supportive of her dreams.”

Meanwhile, my ex-husband announced he was getting remarried. With no job, I ended up listing the house I had bought on my own, was so proud of, and had worked so hard for. I took freelance jobs, collected unemployment when I could, and deposited the measly child support checks I received from my ex, while he and his girlfriend renovated our old house and put their touches on it, as a couple.

I was hospitalized for stress, anxiety, and depression and developed stress-induced psoriasis. Then I found out I had skin cancer on my nose and had to have reconstructive surgery. The one thing I’d always had going for me was my looks and now I didn’t even have that. I’d lost it all. Everything I’d ever loved, trusted, hoped for, and believed in was gone. And then I found a lump in my breast, to add to it all. And my insurance was ending soon.

I decided I couldn’t take anymore and seriously considered ending it all. It was obvious God hated me, if there even was a God. And if not, karma must be getting it’s evil revenge for something horrible I’d done in my past... leaving my unhappy marriage, maybe? Could God or karma be that shallow and that spiteful? Or was I simply being put to the ultimate test? If so, I wasn’t performing very well under the pressure and had definitely failed the test.

My house was sold. I had no job. My youngest daughter preferred her dad and my oldest daughter was going off to college. Why continue to torture myself in a life that no longer had a place for me? What was keeping me here, where so much had fallen apart and gone bad in my life? I had nothing left in my old life so why not start fresh and begin anew?

So, that’s what I decided to do. I took a leap of faith and chose to escape the past and start a new life. I have no idea what the future holds for me but I do know the past has nothing better to offer me and my time there is done. Onward and upward to bigger and better things. Or at least that’s my hope... the reality of it remains to be seen. Wish me luck!