Since having my whole life turned upside down by a predatory psychopath, I have learned a lot about narcissistic abusers. I have read every article, book, watched every video, and immersed myself into the sick world of these people to try and better understand what happened to me. What I have learned is both heartbreaking and eye opening.

I’m mentally strong. I have seen a lot of trauma in my life. I walked through fire with my husband as he fought for his life against stage 4 colon cancer and then watched him die a slow and painful death. I stand strong in the face of adversity and not much breaks me. But this broke me.

That’s because it’s unnatural for one human to treat another human like their personal atm and ego booster. Narcissists prey on empathetic people because it’s a quality they do not understand or possess. It’s not in my nature to ever use, abuse, and hurt another person the way he did me. I didn’t even understand that I was in an abusive relationship until it was over. I draw strength from the stories others have shared with me about their own experiences with narcissistic abusers. It’s a club I wish I wasn’t a card carrying member of, but if writing about it helps one person not suffer at the hands of these mentally disturbed people I will type until my fingers bleed.

I was born and raised in the south, where we often brush uncomfortable situations under the rug in an effort to keep everyone involved comfortable. I will not stay silent so that he can stay comfortable, much to his dismay. When my precious little 82 year old grandmother hears the entire story, sees the proof, and tells me to give him hell, I’m giving him hell. No question.

The worst thing you can do to a narcissist is expose them for what they are. You begin to unravel the lies they tell and they spiral. Rest assured they are telling the same lies to your replacement and using you and your reaction to the abuse you suffered to play their sick games. You become the crazy ex. Just like the one before you and the one before that. None of you are crazy, you were just pushed to the edge and dared to push back to save yourselves from this man. Remember that.

I believe that one of the greatest tests of my life will be how I handle someone who mishandled me, my child, my emotions, my bank account, my home, and my heart. I won’t pretend it didn’t happen. I won’t hide the truth. I won’t minimize myself or my feelings so that he can do this to someone else. I believe there is no bigger test of a person’s integrity than how they react when they have behaved poorly. He refuses to right the wrongs. I refuse to shut up about it. One of his biggest mistakes was going to war with someone who has walked through the hell of cancer and losing a man who had more integrity in his pinky toe than this monster has in his whole miserable body. I’ve been to war for 3 years. I won’t back down from a clown that destroyed my life in 6 months.

Integrity means doing the right thing even when no one is watching. Integrity means owning up to your mistakes and taking responsibility for your actions. Integrity does not mean preying on someone’s weaknesses for your own financial gain. Integrity does not mean lying and deceiving everyone involved to make yourself look like an upstanding human when your behavior says you’re a liar, cheater, gaslighter, thief, and all around bad person. Integrity does not involve manipulation of the person you are dating and it does not involve manipulation of a child.

The man I dated forced his way into my child’s life. He picked up her order at Starbucks one day when we happened to be there at the same time, ran over to her and said “Here you go, Princess”. He had her just as fast as he had me. When he spent the night at my house regularly he carried her to bed, tucked her in, told her he loved her.. he played dad to a child who watched hers die months prior. He laid in bed with her and giggled, took her to buy special toys to woo her, curled up in my husband’s chair with her to watch movies- all things I should’ve never allowed. I wasn’t thinking clearly, but every boundary I set he crossed in such a way that it was disarming and endearing. At the time I thought my heart would explode. Now it makes me feel physically sick to my stomach to know he involved her in his attempt to sink his teeth into my money and my life. He was lovebombing us. And we fell for it.

He talked to her about the importance of not telling people at church that he spent the night with us. In an effort to make him comfortable and protect his “privacy” he so badly wanted, we walked out and around and out the side door to avoid seeing him so she wouldn’t speak to him in front of his children. This is how he wanted it. She didn’t understand it at all, but he put it all on me. He said he was “protecting” us from people judging me for dating too early after the death of my husband. He was protecting himself so no one would figure out he was dating multiple people at once. He was protecting his own lies. Everything he does is to benefit him and him only. Everything is calculated and planned out meticulously to serve his purpose, no matter how many bodies he leaves on the floor on his way through life. Even the youngest are victims of these animals.

The thing about narcissists that I learned that has proven to be so true with this one is they are chameleons. They mirror the people they are with because they have no identity of their own. He looks like a totally different person now than he did when I met him. It’s shocking really. If you say you like something they automatically love it, too. You share your dream car with them? Oh look, they want the same one. They adopt your likes and dislikes in an attempt to check all the boxes. It draws you in because you can’t believe there is someone out there that syncs so perfectly with everything you like. Except it’s all a lie. The very thing you loved together they will use to devalue you with throughout the relationship. One particular morning when we woke up in our favorite hotel in Atlanta together, him laying in the bed with my favorite red lipstick all over his face, I was on cloud nine. I got in the shower and when I got out we were getting close to check out time. He asked how much longer I was going to be and I commented that I just needed to put make up on and I would be ready. He said something that day that made zero sense that day but caused me to have a lightbulb moment when I met his current girlfriend for a 2 hour face to face chat one day at her request. He told me he didn’t like women who wore make up. I laughed it off at the time because of course he did, he would even tell me “red lips” before we went out. Throughout our relationship dressing up, make up, hair done was not only encouraged it was specifically requested by him. He would always tell me to “make him look good”. I didn’t mind because that’s just who I’ve always been. Now here he was, standing in front of me telling me he didn’t like any of that. When I met my replacement, she told me she never wears make up, rarely dresses up, and wears her hair in a hat all the time. He was already mirroring her and her likes and dislikes to further devalue me and our relationship. It seems small and insignificant but it’s a huge piece to the puzzle. Nothing is wrong with either way of looking or dressing. People are who they are. The devaluing phase is part of the game. But my life is not a game.

Narcissists are also opportunistic creatures. If you’ll notice they always position themselves around people who can serve them in some way. You have a boat and it’s summertime? They’re your best friend. You have a wealthy friend? They want them to “invest” in something with them. My narcissist was way too interested in my husband’s estate and when it would be settled. I firmly believe that if it was settled already he would be a permanent fixture in my life. At one point he yelled at me because he didn’t think it was happening fast enough and that I was being “jerked around” by my husband’s attorney. He demanded he come sit in on a meeting because he didn’t think I was aggressive enough. I said no, he raged some more. One of the last conversations I ever had with him- after I found out he cheated on me, took my money, sold me a car he had title pawned the title to- he had the nerve to ask me if I had any good news from the lawyer yet. When I danced around the question to avoid sharing anymore personal information with him he persisted further. My replacement has everything he values in life, and sadly it has nothing to do with her as a person. It’s almost as if he was keeping both of us as supply to see which of us would be the best cash cow and she won based on timeline alone. All he cares about is status, money, homes, cars. He lacks depth. Take away everything he puts value in and he would be gone on to the next person who can provide that for him. But it will never be enough.

Nothing will ever be enough to fill the black hole of his soul. Narcissists lack heart. There is something seriously wrong with someone who can leave such a path of destruction and move on to the next person like nothing happened. This was not a normal break up. This was not “Hey this isn’t working for me anymore. I hope we can still be friends”.

This was

“You’re crazy”

“I never told you I loved you”

“I never told Quinn I loved her”

“We were just friends, Cyndi. You’re delusional”

“You’re obsessed with me”

“People are going to think you’re crazy”

“I had no feelings for you”

“You’re crazy like the rest of them. I hate women and I hate you”

“You made it all up in your mind because that’s what you wanted”

“If you go to the police I’ll tell them it was a generous gift from a friend”

“If you go to the police I’ll tell people this is what you like in bed”

“If you tell anyone I’ll tell everyone you’re a worthless mother”

“I’ll have your job”

“You tell anyone and no one will want to date you ever again”

“Why can’t we just be friends?”

“You’re an unfit mother and I’ll make sure everyone knows that”

“I’ll have her taken away from you if you’re not careful”

“I will rage on you”

“I will slit your throat in your sleep”

“Be careful out there, I know you don’t have Q with you”

“Enjoy being home alone tonight, looks like you’ll be there by yourself”

This was surveillance of my life. This was surveillance of my child’s life. This was the loss of my privacy and months of terror and stalking by a man who does not take no for an answer.

This was abuse. I was abused. I am a survivor of narcissistic rage and abuse. I was physically, mentally, emotionally, verbally, and financially abused.

And I survived. And you will, too. You just have to be strong enough to stand up and speak out.

Do it for the next one. Do it for the ones before you. I’m doing it for Q, because she was his victim, too.

I’m always interested in knowing what other people’s experience in therapy is like. Mine has been a Godsend. My therapist hits me with real, honest truths even when I don’t want to hear them. She listens to me try to rationalize my feelings and points out what I’m responsible for and what is not my responsibility. A lot of what I feel guilt and sadness for I have no control over. It’s simply a reaction to what has been done to me and what I’ve been through.

Several months ago I had a discussion with someone about therapy. This person relayed their appointment and now their therapist said they needed to “Drive their own bus” and stop letting the events of their past dictate their future. The premise was that, instead of letting the anger he experienced in the past be his driving force in life, he take control and drive his bus instead of clinging angrily on to the roof of it while other people drive it.

One problem with that- this person has used the proverbial bus to run over everything and everyone in his path, leaving a trail of destruction wherever he goes. I was no exception.

You see, in order for therapy to work, you have to be honest. You have to talk about things in a way that doesn’t make you look great sometimes. You have to admit fault. You have to come clean. It’s the only way you get everything you need out of therapy. The only way therapy works is if you are an open book and you have a therapist that gives you honest, sometimes brutal advice based on your own brutal honesties.

Do I think that this person told their therapist they had taken full advantage of a grieving widow and her child mere months after the loss of their beloved husband and father?

No. No I don’t.

I was always a secret in this situation. I don’t expect him to have been honest about me behind the closed doors of an office door, either.

After picking over every single detail of my last relationship with my therapist we have come to many conclusions, but the biggest one is that my intent was to do no harm. I allowed myself to be “the secret” because he convinced me that my existence would hurt his children. He convinced me my existence would hurt his parents. He convinced me that anything more that being a secret fixture in his life and a “friend” in public would hurt him, even though my daughter and I were the only ones who saw pain and loss in this situation. He was a daily fixture in our lives and then he wasn’t. Neither of us understand that to this day.

We were run over, and he was the one driving the bus.

I have struggled with the notion that forgiving someone doesn’t mean forgetting. My therapist and my spiritual mentors pointed out that as Christians, we are called to forgive. We are also called to hold the guilty accountable for their actions. Holding them accountable breaks my heart all over again, although I may be the only person in their life that has ever said “What you did is not ok. I have forgiven you, but I will hold you accountable because that’s what I am required to do so you don’t do this to anyone else”.

The trouble with empathy is that you take on emotional responsibility for what happens to people who don’t care what happens to you. You mistakenly think that everyone is empathetic, and that is not the case. Some people are happy to leave you in the middle of the road bleeding to death after running over you with their bus and moving on quickly to their next victim. Some people are given every opportunity to wrong their rights but don’t.

You can’t force them to. You can hope. You can pray about it. But in the end, personal choice wins every time. I have found myself making deals with what feels like the devil. “Well if he would just produce the title to the car, I could overlook XYZ. If he would just pay me monthly, I can see that he’s making an effort to return the money he took from us, and I wouldn’t have to move forward to make him do it.” My therapist told me his intentions are clear- he doesn’t think he did anything wrong, his parents don’t think he did anything wrong, he’s surrounded by people who enable him so he will never right his wrongs. His lifestyle and beliefs will not allow him to. All traits of narcissistic personality disorder.

Still, I empathize. I pray for the addict in him. I pray for the habitual gambler. I pray for the sinner. I pray for the person who is so broken that, when he saw me that first day in Starbucks minding my own business, decided I was an easy target and continued to break what was left of me. Throughout the entirety of our relationship I kept thinking “He has so much potential. If he could just get his life together he would be so great”. I found myself waiting out the bad times because he promised good times were coming. This person has had opportunity after opportunity to be loved. He has been in the company of some pretty amazing women and blew every shot he had with the same behavior he had with me. There is something really tragically sad about someone who uses and abuses women the way he does. There is something really wrong with someone who can bond with my young child and use her as a way to get closer to me and earn my trust, and then discard both of us like we are nothing. But that’s what happened.

Driving your own bus, to him, meant only looking out for number one. It meant doing whatever it took to get himself ahead, even if it meant taking everything we had. It meant lying, cheating, and stealing. It meant leaving me with a car I own but cannot drive. It meant seeing me so sad, traumatized, and broken by him and telling people that I’m “crazy” and “delusional”.

It’s important to remember as you drive your own bus through life, that you do no harm. The sum of your character is how you treat people. The sum of your character is how you right your wrongs. The sum of your character is how, even when making decisions that hurt people, you correct yourself when you need to.

This requires a bus full of people. My abuser’s bus is empty. That’s the only way he can continue to do the things he does with no remorse at all for the people he has left dead on the road from his abuse.

Mine is full. It’s full of people who keep me level headed and grounded when I just feel like losing my mind. It’s full of people who I trust and love to give me honest advice about how to proceed. I don’t want anything I do to ever be out of vengeance or bitterness, so before every decision I make I pray for my abuser. Every seat on my hypothetical bus has someone in it that I have reached out to for help on how to do the right thing when the wrong thing has been done to us. From my religious leaders, my friends, my parents, my grandparents, Matt’s parents, my therapist, and my daughter- we’re at capacity. Not a single decision I’ve made to hold this person accountable has been driven by hate. It’s been driven by love and empathy for a person who has no love and empathy for anyone but himself.

I have to face my abuser in court this week. I don’t want to. Seeing him and hearing his voice is detrimental to my mental health. The last time I faced him in court I shut down emotionally and found it hard to open my mouth and speak when spoken to by the judge. This person will likely never fully understand the impact he had on our lives. He will never understand how his actions have hurt us. He will likely never care. The last time I saw him in court I just wanted to turn to him and say “You can fix this. You can make all of this go away by doing the right thing. You have the power to fix this”. Unfortunately you cannot will someone into doing the right thing.

Yesterday at church our pastor spoke on loving your enemies and how important that is. He said we should pray for those who hurt us every day, that it may not change them but it will change you. I’ve been doing this since the break up. Every single day, even when it’s hard, even when I’m angry, even when I’m sad- I pray for him. It takes a lot out of me to pray for someone who is not sorry. It takes a lot out of me to pray for someone who continues to hurt us for sport. Sometimes when I’m done I’m a pile of emotions I don’t even understand. But still, I pray.

If you can love someone and care about the well being of someone who hurt you so deeply, it does change you. Hate and discontent for him because of my own hurt feelings has turned into empathy for someone who is just broken. I pray every day that his heart will be changed. I pray every day that he will, for once in his life, do the right thing.

Driving your own bus means doing it with love. It means being cautious and making sure you aren’t hurting anyone along the way. It means making sure the people you form relationships with know who you are and what you are and that, when the relationship crashes, they don’t have to pick up the shattered glass and continue to be cut by your actions.

So every day, I pray. And every day, I have open, honest discussions with my daughter about what it means to forgive and why we forgive. She prays for him, too. She loved him. We both did.

The wheels on the bus go round and round and, if you’ve driven your bus with love and understanding, everyone gets home safe.

One year ago is the day our world started crashing down around us. We were in Colorado for treatment and found out Matt’s cancer had spread “all over”. We could not fly home. He was dying. They knew he was dying. I knew he was dying. Matt knew he was dying. Our daughter was scared to death. Enterprise rental car gave us a brand new Tahoe to drive from Albuquerque to Alabama. We promised him he could die at home and he did, it just took until August for that to happen.

This is a picture of him in Telluride a few days before we found out. He was so weak but obsessed over seeing it from the top of the mountain. We made that happen for him. He looked at the world with different eyes than we did, probably because he knew how close to heaven he really was.

Driving him home was an out of body experience. I have driven those interstates many times in the past, but never had I driven someone I love home to die. Every mile felt like 100. Every gasp felt like it could be his last. I wanted to run. I wanted to take him so far away that no one or nothing could hurt him. He was my protector, and in that moment I couldn’t be his. I couldn’t save him.

Survivors guilt is real. I would’ve taken his place if it meant he got to spend the rest of his life with the people that loved him, especially our daughter. I would’ve gone to the ends of the earth to save him. Accepting that I couldn’t was impossible, but we drove state to state with him completely dependent on oxygen and his condition continued to deteriorate. I live with the “what if’s” every day of my life.

At the end of his life, all he longed for was home. He called out to his parents. Then he started calling out to people who had gone to Heaven before him. He started having vivid conversations with his Grampy, who had died when our daughter was just a baby. It was beautiful to watch him talk to him like he was right there in the room with us, but also crushing to know he was preparing to cross over.

I held his hand and counted his breaths. I made him as comfortable as I could. He was in physical pain, and watching him suffer and knowing the cancer was the cause was unbearable. All we wanted to do was fix it and we couldn’t.

Losing Matt taught me a lot about life, but the biggest lesson it taught me was that all we have is today. It taught me to love hard, tell people you love how you feel about them, hug them big, and always be the last to let go.

Today as you go through life, remember Matt. Remember his walk and his faith in God and the impact he made on so many lives. He knew his time on earth was limited and he lived every day like it was his last right up until the very end.

He got to the top of the mountain. The view he has now is unlike anything any of us can ever imagine and I know he is free of cancer, free of pain, and free in the arms of Jesus.

“From the ends of the earth I call to you, I call as my heart grows faint; Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.” – Psalms 61:2

I used to dread getting older. I remember crying so hard when I turned 30. My 20s were pretty amazing, full of travel and adventure and fun. I thought 30 was the end of the world. What I didn’t know is that 30 was going to bring me more love than I ever thought possible. It brought me Matt. 31 brought me Quinn. And between the two of them, I have been loved more in those years following than most people are ever loved in a lifetime. For that I am so grateful.

After 30, birthdays were my favorite. It was a celebration of all of the wonderful and excitement for what was to come. My first birthday I spent with Matt was in NYC.

When the clock struck midnight and I was officially 31 according to the date on the calendar, I was standing at the highest deck of the Empire State Building with him. My birthday present from that trip involved a little blue box from Tiffany’s and 8ish months later, our Quinn. Best gift ever. He always was one for extravagant displays on birthdays. He once drove all night from Indiana just to surprise me at our apartment door in Atlanta for my birthday.

After 30, my life just kept improving. Sure, there were hard times. But every year I had something new to look forward to. Then cancer struck and birthdays were different. My focus was on saving his life. Last year for my birthday we were in Colorado for an experimental treatment as a Hail Mary to save his life. It didn’t work, he was too far gone.

That was the last birthday we would spend together. He was very sick and fading fast. Still, he tried to make it special. He had this uncanny ability to locate a British pub no matter where in the world we traveled. He knew my love for British beer so he always wanted me to have a pint on my birthday. So last year, we toasted to the year that he was going to kick cancer’s ass. I really thought he could do it. It wasn’t for lack of trying.

I thought a lot about how this birthday was going to be without him. Would I even find a way to celebrate a year that took the love of my life? I decided that we would celebrate like we always do, surrounded by love and laughter.

One of my favorite shows is Sex and the City.

I can quote almost every word from every show. I still hate Berger (because who breaks up with someone on a post it?) and the Russian (because hitting Carrie made me want to break his face). I still cry when Charlotte beats Big with the bouquet at the first wedding. In that moment she felt how my friends have felt recently- a strong urge to protect me from what hurt me. I love Big. But the fact is I’ve loved a few Bigs in my life and they are often not deserving of the time and energy you pour into them. I’m beginning to wish Carrie had ended up with Aiden. Nice, normal, Aiden. Used to, I would swoon over Big. Now I see so much of my last relationship in how he treated her and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Matt was an Aiden.

On this birthday I’m focusing on friendship. My squad is one in a million and, even though it’s spread out far and wide, I know they are with me every step of the way. Even when I have no idea what I’m doing. Even when I feel like a failure. Even when I hate everything and everyone. They love me, just as I am. Some quotes from my favorite show reminded me of my favorite people. Everything in life I need to know I learned from the Bible, my mama, and Carrie Bradshaw.

“No matter who broke your heart or how long it takes to heal, you’ll never get through it without your friends.” – Carrie

My friends. They stand by me through the hardest times of my life. They have most recently watched me lose myself in someone who was not worthy of my time. They were just as angry as I was when I was betrayed. One of them met him one time and said “NOPE!”.

Friends know before we know.

They have seen me at my worst, loved me when I was unlovable, and helped me laugh through the darkness.

They are my girl squad.

Someone asked me once why I say I have so many best friends. It’s because I have the best friends. We raise our children together, see each other through losses, celebrations, and everything in between. I have a diverse group of friends because I gravitate towards people who see the world like I do and don’t take it too seriously. We know we all belong to each other.

“They say nothing lasts forever …dreams change, trends come and go, but friendships never go out of style.” – Carrie

The best friends are the ones you can go months without seeing and then pick right back up where you left off. Moving around a lot means my friends are scattered. We keep in touch as much as possible and never, ever stop supporting one another. When Matt died one of my New Jersey friends hopped on a plane to stand beside me at his funeral. We integrated her very quickly into southern funeral culture. We fed her until she almost popped. She’s catholic, but now she’s an honorary baptist.

“The most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself.”- Carrie

Because of my friends, I love myself more. I love them. They are all a part of who I am. I love who I am when I’m with them. I love who I am when we laugh until our cheeks hurt. I love who I am when we spend nights drinking wine, eating everything in sight, and letting the children run wild. They get me. They are my people.

“Maybe the past is like an anchor holding us back. Maybe you have to let go of who you were to become who you will be.” -Carrie

I don’t want my past to hold me back. Matt didn’t want it to, either. It was his wish that Quinn and I live life to the fullest. I know that time is fleeting and life is ever-changing. It helps so much to be surrounded by strong women who push me to keep going, when staying in bed sounds easier. He never took anything too seriously, even cancer.

“The fact is, sometimes it’s really hard to walk in a single woman’s shoes. That’s why we need really special ones now and then to make the walk a little more fun.” – Carrie

My friends mostly roll their eyes at my shopping habits. They know that my favorite thing to do is pop bottles and tags. It’s hard to be the single one in a sea of mostly married people. But they make sure I never feel left out. They include us in family gatherings and their husbands step up when my daughter needs a father figure in her life. They make sure she doesn’t miss a thing, like the father daughter banquet at church. They even fake excitement when I show them (yet another pair) of my new single lady shoes. Shoes make everything just a little bit better.

“After all, seasons change, so do cities; people come into your life and people go. But it’s comforting to know that the ones you love are always in your heart. And if you’re very lucky, a plane ride away.” – Carrie

In July we’re going to Houston. I cannot wait to hear “this is your captain speaking”. We’ll spend the weekend surrounded by our extended Friend Family celebrating liberty and life. Our kids will play, we will drink wine, laugh, and enjoy time together.

These moments are sacred to me. Time spent with my friends is never wasted.

They have all carried me through the last few years of my life. When I felt like I couldn’t stand up on my own, they literally wrapped me in their arms and dragged me to the next step.

And little eyes are watching us. They see how we love each other. They see how we support each other. They see how we stand up for each other and cheer each other on, even when the world tells us we can’t do something, we’re too loud, too opinionated, or that we should conform. They know better because we know better. They are our legacy. They will be the next group of strong women to beat the bad guy with the proverbial bouquet like Charlotte did when Big stood Carrie up at the alter.

Hear them roar.

So this one is for my girls. I love you all and can’t wait to slide into 40 with you by my side. You’re the Thelmas to my Louise, the Mary Anns to my Wanda, and the Charlottes, Mirandas, and Samanthas to my Carrie.

Here’s to 39 years of keeping it weird, crying til I laugh, laughing til I cry, and never for a second settling for anything less than the people that love me know I deserve.

And to Matt, who always reminded me that I “age well for an old bird”. Cheers, Dimples. I’ll see you on the other side.

Eight years ago today was the day my life changed for the better. It’s the day I drove to the airport to pick Matt up. This was in my memories today. This is how he felt about that day. The internet is a lovely way to preserve feelings. His words:

When we began talking on Twitter through a community of other people on Weight Watchers, Matt had a girlfriend and I was married, so our friendship was just that: a friendship, consisting of tweets public for everyone to see. Hashtags brought us together. My love for them now stems from what they brought into my life back then.

One day when I was frustrated beyond belief with my weight loss (and my failed marriage) he messaged me privately on Twitter to offer advice. He was very sweet and sincere and seemed very concerned with not making me mad or offending me in any way. After that, we would message each other weekly after weigh ins and celebrate losses and complain about gains. This went on for a year. Well I would complain about gains. Because Matt never gained one single week during his weight loss.

Matt got dumped by his girlfriend. He was dating around and had been set up on a blind date. He went out with the girl once. For the second date she stood him up and he tweeted about it. I responded (publicly) something like “Aw! If I was in England I’d go out with you!”. He messaged me instantly and said that he’d cut off his arm for a girl like me. This made me blush. I had such a big crush on him.

We became absolutely inseparable. Lonely nights in an empty apartment weren’t so bad when I knew I could FaceTime him and see his smiling face. We laughed so much and really complimented each other’s personalities. It became very clear that through all the sadness my divorce brought me, there was happiness around the corner.

My heart was beating across an ocean.

I drove to the airport that day with my hands shaking so bad I could barely keep my car on the road. I had been tracking his flight online all day and knew he had landed. Nervous excitement! The international terminal at the airport had just been open a week and I was super nervous that I’d get lost. I didn’t. I was all dressed up in that same black dress I wore in my Twitter profile picture. It wasn’t anything spectacular, but he loved it.

I walked through the airport and got on the escalator to ride down into the area where he should be, praying I wouldn’t fall. I started scanning the crowd.

When I saw his face every fear I had just fell away. He was pushing his luggage cart towards me with the biggest smile I’ve ever seen on his beautiful face. You know in the movies where everything goes slow motion and the music starts and the rest of the world falls away and the people seem like the only two on the planet?

THAT. EXACTLY.

The song that was playing in my head in that moment was Gavin DeGraw’s Follow Through:

“Oh, this is the start of something good

Don’t you agree?

I haven’t felt like this in so many moons

You know what I mean?

And we can build through this destruction

As we are standing on our feet

So, since you want to be with me

You’ll have to follow through

With every word you say

And I, all I really want is you

You to stick around

I’ll see you everyday

But you have to follow through”

And he did. With every single thing he ever said to me, he followed through.

I had the opportunity to meet Gavin in person at a concert we were supposed to go to together after Matt died and tell him what his music meant to us. It was a mainstay in our relationship from start to finish, right down to the day Matt died. We played all of his favorite songs for him. We believed that belief made things real, because it always did for us.

I can’t even describe how it felt to have had someone like that, someone who you can completely depend on to pull you out when you’re drowning. At the lowest point in my life, when I was the most lonely I had ever been, this angel came along to show me what real happiness could be. It was amazing.

When he hugged me, I melted. When he kissed me I thought for sure I would pass out. When I looked into the most sparkly blue eyes I had ever seen, I knew I was in trouble. We finally made our way out of the airport, wedged his luggage in Ruby (who says smart cars have no cargo space!) and started what became the most amazing summer of my life.

Matt’s original 40 day trip turned into a 90 day trip, with him flying out of America on day 90 at 11:59pm.

Technically, he could have boarded a plane and come right back for another 90 days. But he probably needed to go home and work some before his next trip because I spent all of his money. We had a big “uh oh” when he was in America that first 90 days. This girl? The one with the broken uterus who couldn’t have kids? Well it turns out that wasn’t true. I have the 7 year old to prove it.

She is the best thing that ever happened to either of us. She is his legacy.

I know that bad things happen so good things can happen. I believe in fate. I believe in destiny. I believe that there is a soulmate out there for every single person on this planet. They may not live in your hometown, your state, your zipcode, or even your country. But they exist.

And if you’re lucky enough to have them come into your life like I did, hold them close and as long as God lets you. Because He always wants the good ones back a little too early.

When he hit a knee and asked me to marry him, I laughed at him. And then I said yes. Ate all those “never getting married ever again” worlds really fast.

Cancer stole the best years of his life. Cancer destroyed our perfect family. Cancer took my only child’s dad. But cancer cannot take these memories away from us. In December, we flew some of his remains home to England for a memorial there and so he can be with his family. I placed the box on the exact spot where we kissed that steamy day in May 8 years ago.

The escalator that I thought for sure I would fall down on my way to him. Every single time we went to the airport after that day he would stop me there and kiss me and give me the biggest hug. I would do anything in the world to relive that day one more time. It was magic. If it reads like a fairy tale, it’s because it was. I was constantly in disbelief that I actually got to be happy with someone. I had everything I ever wanted in Matt. He was my person.

All that’s left now of our relationship are memories like this. Dates I cannot forget. Laughter. Love. So much love. And a little girl who doesn’t remember her daddy not being sick. But I remember. He was a machine. He never slowed down. He had more energy than anyone I had ever met and he lit up every room he walked into. His head was always on a swivel, looking for excitement or trouble. Usually both.

Stage 4 colon cancer robbed me of the love of my whole life. We weren’t perfect. Our marriage wasn’t perfect. But we loved every second of life together.

This is the last time I held his hand. I don’t want to remember him like this.

I want to remember him like this.

Full of life and excitement, full of optimism and love. He never saw the negative. He was the most positive person I had ever met. I ask myself all the time “what would Matt do?” Matt would live. And he would keep loving people. And he would keep trying, even when trying is hard.

He promised to love me until the day he died. He always followed through.

My daughter has been playing Taylor Swift on repeat. Fitting, because her daddy was the biggest undercover Swifty fan around. He wanted to take her to a concert and have matching shirts made. The ultimate dad. She’s stuck on this one song, but the Live version from TayTay’s concert in Paris.

Songs trigger things. Even angsty teenagey songs.

One of my favorite people, a writer himself, told me last night on a phone call that I will cherish (because having guy friends that are just friends is so amazing at this point in my life, shout out to my “safe men friends”)- “No one wants to read about how to sew a button on”. So if you want something that boring, this is not for you. If you want to hear about the underbelly if grief, pull up a chair. It may get weird. It may get ugly. I may cry again.

I don’t cry. It’s weird. I usually only cry when I’m really mad. But today while the rain poured down on my drive home alone, I sobbed. I know this is healthy, but I always feel like a weak person after and I hate that feeling.

Being strong means always holding it in. Picking a place on the wall and staring at it until the feeling passes. Holding it together as long as you possibly can. I did that today. Until I couldn’t.

Carrying around pain is exhausting. It makes the easiest things so hard. It makes the hardest things feel impossible. Today, I shut down. I haven’t let myself do that in a long time but I guess my body needed it.

The thing about grief and pain is that neither is linear. You don’t get to compartmentalize and decide “Today is the day I shut down completely and can’t function!” Your body chooses those days for you, and you have to either force yourself through it and fail miserably or succumb to it. Today I succumbed. I used to think that having what felt like a cold, dead, black heart made me a stronger person. I was just trying to will away the pain I couldn’t handle dealing with.

Panic attacks and few and far between lately but today I felt it build and build until it happened. That feeling of dread, the tightness in my chest, the pounding in my left ear I get when I’m so stressed and so overwhelmed, that feeling that I would rather be unconscious than face the feelings that are next- all of that. It happened.

I ended up in the fetal position praying for it to stop. This is a position I’ve been in many, many times. Still, it seems like such a foreign way to process pain when I’m used to just powering through.

Survival today was not looking. Survival consisted of not making eye contact. Survival was trying so hard to block out the sound of a voice that hurt me so I wouldn’t have to feel that pain again. Survival was and is removing from my life people who cause me pain. Survival was praying that it was over as fast as humanly possibly so I could go back to the safety of my world without him in it. Survival for me today felt like hell.

But I’m here and I’m alive and I made it through another dark day of trying to figure out how I made such a mess of the perfect life I had before it all came crashing down around me, most of it my own doing from really bad decisions on who I let in my circle.

I know I need to feel real human emotions to get past all of the things hurting me. I know that masking them won’t help me at all. I know what I need to do to help myself move forward. The wonderful thing about loving so much is that you feel everything a little bit more than the average person. The flip side of that is that you feel everything bad, too. It’s hard to accept that people will never be sorry for hurting you, but some people are incapable of basic human emotions. Being empathetic should be viewed as an attribute. But today, it felt like a mark against an exterior of strength I’ve fought like hell to build.

When it rains my daughter says “Mama the sky is crying”. Well today, I cried with it. I begged God to continue to heal my heart. And He will, in time. I keep reminding myself that everything is temporary. The harsh reality of that is that even happiness is temporary. And I was happy, even in my grief, for a brief moment in time. Now I’m happy temporarily for different reasons. I want real happiness again.

I have been keeping gratitude lists for a while now. Every day I write down 5 things I’m grateful for. Some days I struggle to find the 5 things. Some days are repeats of the mundane from the day before. Today my list is simple, but poignant at this point in my grief journey-

1) God, because without Him I wouldn’t have been able to pull myself out of bed today to face the hard stuff. When nothing seems real and I’m overwhelmed by the reality of knowing that Matt is gone forever, the only thing in the world that can comfort me is my faith in God. The promise of heaven and the notion that we are on this earth for just a blip in time is my saving grace. I have to remind myself 100 times a day that this life is only temporary.

2) Quinn, because she is my constant. My reason to be here. My reminder that everything good in the world lives in her great big heart. Protecting her heart is my number one goal in life. I may fail at everything I do lately, but I will never fail her because she is the little light of my life.

3) Friends that love me. The outpouring of love the last few months has been extraordinary. It’s hard to love someone who is grieving. Sometimes this means 3 hour phone conversations where you both cry your eyes out and sometimes this means a “You good?” text so they know I haven’t jumped off a cliff yet.

4) Family. From the huge things like making sure me and Quinn feel loved and supported to the little things like my daddy knowing how much I hate pumping gas and not only filling up my car for me, but treating me to a tank of gas, I have the best family. They all loved Matt so much. His loss affects us all so deeply. I would give anything to hear him say “hey mama!” to my mom again and steal one of her diet cokes. He loved her so much. Or for him to yell “mum! Tea!!” to his own mom.

5) Forgiveness. I am thankful everyday that I am forgiven. I am working so hard on forgiving others. It’s something that has always come really easily for me. I will give people a 4th, 5th, and 6th chance even, because I believe in redemption and I believe there is good in the world. I also believe that some people just need someone to believe in them. But as I continue down the road of grief I am finding it harder and harder to forgive people who hurt me. I am praying that I am able to get back to that point. It’s hard to forgive people who are not sorry. It’s hard to forgive people who continue to hurt you with their actions. It’s impossibly hard to forgive people who saw you broken and broke you some more. I pray every day for that to change for me. I pray that I’m able to forgive as freely as I love.

So no, nobody wants to read about how to sew a button on. And nobody wants to read things that are depressing when life right now is pretty depressing all over the place. Writing about my experiences as they are happening is one of the most therapeutic things that I do. It’s how I process life. It’s how I get through the hard times and celebrate the good. Here’s hoping there is good coming around the corner. I’ll be alright, it’s just a thousand cuts.

Losing my husband 9 months ago was the most traumatic thing I’ve ever experienced. Watching him suffer was hell on earth. I can spout off colon cancer statistics and treatment options and warning signs almost robotically. I lived it. It consumed my every thought for 18 long months of suffering. I can recall everything that happened in vivid detail. When you live every day in fear that the person you love the most will die, you burn everything into your brain. Even the horrible things.

What no one prepares you for is the afterlife, what happens after the last sympathy card is opened, what happens when the crowds have gone, the next trauma has happened to someone in your community, and people have moved on.

Then it’s just you against the world. Or sometimes, the world against you.

The afterlife is all about survival, but I have learned it has to be as much about recovering from the trauma than it is about survival from it. Merely surviving is not living.

I’m reading a book called “Whole Again” by Jackson Mackenzie. In it, he writes-

“Recovery becomes more about symptom management than root cause resolution. It’s akin to putting out buckets of water every night to catch the leaking rain, rather than fixing the hole in the roof. Eventually the buckets become full, so you’re running around finding new buckets and emptying old buckets, feeling more exhausted with every passing day.

This is the nature of trauma. It keeps you distracted with bucket management so you never have a chance to look up at the roof.”

My husband died on a Saturday. Sunday we didn’t know what to do with ourselves so we went to church because it’s what he would’ve wanted us to do. Monday we planned the funeral. Tuesday was the funeral. Wednesday my daughter started school and Thursday I started my job as a preschool teacher after living a blissful life as a stay at home mom for 6 years.

I was distracted with bucket management immediately.

I think somehow I thought that if I stayed busy and resumed life as “normal”, it would fix the brokenness I was determined not to allow myself to feel. I was traumatized and not dealing with the trauma in the appropriate way. I was running around in circles, trying to keep the buckets from overflowing but never really making progress. I stuffed away every bad feeling with anything that would help as a way to not deal with them. I spent a lot of time replacing the bad feelings with good, the lows with highs, the negative with positive.

When I was at my most vulnerable just 2 months after my husband died, I met someone. In my mind, I thought that somehow this was a naturally occurring relationship. I do not believe that was the case from day one, in retrospect.

Widows, if you have someone take extreme interest in you very soon after the death of your spouse, these people aren’t your soulmates.

This is predatory behavior that you may not be able to identify because you are too busy with bucket management. Be hyper vigilant.

It’s hard to be in pain and have someone come along with the sole intention of taking from you and causing you more pain. But these people exist and they walk among us. The best way to preserve your sanity is to remind yourself that no respectable, caring, loving, or admirable person would ever see you so fresh off of the loss of your spouse and start a relationship with you. Their intentions are not sincere from the beginning.

Grief clouds your judgement. Trauma makes you cling to things that are not good for you. This could be a new “love” interest, alcohol- anything to divert your attention away from working on yourself and healing from the trauma.

What I have learned through therapy for my PTSD associated with watching my husband suffer, die, and then following that up immediately with a terribly abusive relationship is that I am broken. I am a broken person trying to piece my life back together like trying to mend a broken wine glass (I use that analogy because I break every wine glass that makes its way into my house). I kept picking up the same pieces and they kept cutting me, but I was so determined to make it work that I just kept trying and metaphorically bleeding all over everything I touched.

It’s really easy to forget when you’re running around filling buckets that you’re in control. When you’ve lived life in survival mode for so long it’s hard to look up and see the hole and fix it. Sometimes you lack the ability to fix the hole yourself. That’s when you call in the professionals and soak up every bit of information from every book about trauma and grief you can possibly find. Knowledge is power.

Therapy

I cannot stress this enough. Every. Single. Widow. needs a therapist. Male or female, young or old. If you have lost a spouse you need professional help. There is no shame in seeking help. What you’ve been through is the worst of the worst. Your person is gone. Unless you want your family and friends to sit back and watch you self destruct, seek help.

Focus on Yourself

Now is the time to be selfish. Especially when you’ve been a caretaker for a terminally ill spouse. You’ve done the best you could do. You most likely put your own health and well being on the back burner and poured yourself into saving a life. Now it’s time to save yours, because survival is hard. It’s really easy to jump right into saving someone else’s life. I poured all of my energy into a relationship I shouldn’t have even been in so soon after my husband died. In the long run, the pain and subsequent trauma of that relationship far outweighed anything I ever got out of it. What I should’ve done was focus on myself, but I was in “caretaker mode”.

Self care has been the most important part of my grief journey behind therapy. It’s ok to say no to people, it’s ok to splurge on things that make you feel good (we have regular spa nights over here), it’s ok to set boundaries and demand that people respect them.

If you have children, ESPECIALLY if you have children, they need to see that mom/dad is ok. My daughter didn’t need to see me sobbing my eyes out because someone broke my already broken heart. She needed to see mom taking care of herself and focusing on healing us from the trauma, not jumping heart first into a relationship with Mr NotSoWonderful. Lesson learned the hard (and expensive) way.

Have friends who don’t mind calling you out

I am lucky. I don’t surround myself with yes people. I surround myself with genuine friends who will straight up call me out if I’m out of control in any way. You have to be receptive to what they’re saying and not live in denial about it. Have a handful of people who knew about the relationship I was in and told me to run and run fast. I was in denial and didn’t listen. I was too caught up in it, but my eyes are wide open now. I will never ever forgetting crying into my best guy friend’s shoulder and him telling me to get it together and get away from what was hurting me. Everyone needs safe people who do not intend to hurt them emotionally that they can trust to tell them the truth even when they don’t want to hear it. I am blessed enough to have a close group of friends, male and female, that love me and tell me like it is and I love them right back for it.

Pray. All the time, pray.

At the end of the day when you’re all alone with your thoughts and you feel like dying, pray. Pray to get through the next hour. If that’s too long, pray to get through the next minute. Sometimes I pray for sleep just so I won’t have to pray to get through the next 20 seconds. Grief and the aftermath of trauma both come in waves. You cannot numb it. You have to sit in it and feel it to heal from it. What I have learned is that no level of distraction is going to fix this. No amount of “busy” or ignoring it is going to change any of it. I have to do the work to get past it and protect myself from more trauma by not making bad decisions based on previous trauma. The only way I get through the hardest parts is prayer. I have begged God to give me the will to live. I have also begged God not to wake me up the next morning. It’s a delicate balance of sane and insane, broken and shattered. It changes daily.

Get comfortable hitting the pause button

This weekend I did just that. My widow friend and I headed south for sand and sunshine. Sometimes grief needs a vacation, too.

It’s vital for grieving widows to be able to step away from the house they shared with their spouse. The walls can feel like they are closing in at times. Hitting pause and saying “Hey, it’s ok if I get away so I can catch my breath and then come back and face it all again” is ok.

I feel like, for the first time since my husband’s death in August, that I’m finally beginning to heal. I feel like I’m swinging back at the grief and trauma that has been hitting me over and over again since he died and I inadvertently welcomed chaos into my life.

Healing is a daily battle. I don’t know if I’ll ever be whole again, but I hope to go through this life a little less broken than I have been. It sure feels good not to play with broken glass anymore.