What A Difference A Year Makes

This blog is a valuable resource. Not only does it show you what you were doing in your life at a given time, but if you're being brutually honest, as you write the thing, you can actually see how you grow....and how life, as you know it changes.

I can certainly see a lot of growth when I compare what I had written last year, with what I'm doing now.

It's incredible.

This time last year I was terribly sad....I'd say even VERY depressed. My #1 daughter was getting prepared to leave this country for her tour of duty in El Salvador...and I felt as though my life were ending. I actually wanted to curl up into a little tiny ball and just die. All I could do was cry. Compounded with all this, my son was arrested and thrown into jail....and so I was worried all about that and then there was that awful space when I thought I would never be divorced. It was awful.

From rereading passages of this blog I can tell that I'm the kind of person that detests change. It makes me nervous....out of sorts.....and frightened.

I don't know where all that came from. But, it's just my makeup and how I deal with things.

But here I sit, a year later.... I'm fully divorced.

That long dark black period of sadness, uncertainty and fear have all faded away. I'm seeing more and more evidence of sunlight creeping into the gray that once was my life.

I'm amazed and how good it feels to know that everything will be okay.

I'm also shocked that it was such a long black period of time.

Looking back on things, I think the blackness started seeping into my life in the year 2000 or 2001. That's eight years ago!

That's a very long time to experience profound unhappiness....whether you want to call it sadness or depression. It was hell.

For the longest time, I kept my gayness under wraps. I didn't have the energy to deal with that....and all the things that a dad must do to keep his home and hearth in good order.

I remember that the real crack in things started showing in the fall of 2002 when the girls left for college. I thought my world would end. I cried and was terribly depressed. My ex wasn't. She was cold.....almost distant. To her, the departure of the kids seemed almost like a walk in the park.

She offered no words of comfort.....or any type of affection to them or to me.

I should have known then, but I was too much like Pollyanna to really focus on the fact that my marital relationship was sinking fast.

But I didn't.

I guess I had my head in the sand.

Oh well...those are another of life's experiences.

You learn from them.

You go on with your life...hopefully never to repeat those bad moments.

And you get to a place -- like I am now -- where you can look back on things and see just how far you've come.....and just how much you've learned.....and just how much you've grown.

Then you pause......

If you're from a spiritual background like me.....you whisper of prayer of thanksgiving....to the One Who stood by you during all those times of immaturity....and those times of poor, poor choices.......and you thank Him for His patience. His love. His guidance.

And just maybe...one day....you can be there to help another lost soul.....going through a similar period of uncertainty....and to tell them that....."You can survive all this."