Today is My Wedding Anniversary, Except I'm Not Married Anymore
Today would have been my 5th wedding anniversary.
I knew today was coming — actually my body knew before I did. All last week I was a mess. I was sleeping upwards of 15 hours a day, finding myself immersed in a rage-attack, or totally dissociated over a tub of peanut butter.
My friend offered to hold a breathwork session for my roommates and me last Friday (which I heavily resisted — I had no interest in feeling my feelings or moving through them. What I wanted was a bottle of wine and Netflix to distract me.)
That day I read something that said, “When you feel resistance to releasing, try asking yourself if you’re willing to opening.” Opening felt more accessible to me, so I decided to remain open to breathwork instead of binge-drinking, which is the more familiar path despite it being the more harmful.
After the session, I felt horrific. It was as if my entire body was filled with darkness. A black, thick smoke that felt inescapable, yet not my own.
“How are you feeling?” my friend asked me. “I feel terrible.” I gurgled.
Immediately, I noticed an urge inside me to assure her she’d done a good job. Caretaker-Rachel was swooping in subconsciously, primed and conditioned to tell my friend that my feeling terrible wasn’t her fault.
I quickly reminded myself, though, that not only is my emotional state not her responsibility, but it’s also not bad to experience anger.
Many years in therapy have taught me that my emotional state is my responsibility and that other people’s emotional state is theirs. My feeling angry post-breathwork is not a result of her guidance making me angry. It’s just the state that emerged as a result of sitting with my breath and emotions.
(This is where a lot of my thoughts go every moment of my day — it’s like my entire world is created from a place of constant dissection based on the shit I’ve learned in therapy and healing. Sometimes it's exhausting and I’d rather just say whatever I feel or think without the entire psychological/spiritual/philosophical dictionary in my brain. But here we are.)
“I feel terrible,” I continued. “I feel just, angry. And I’ve worked through a lot of anger in the last two years. It’s an emotion I never used to let myself feel, so it’s been a theme in therapy and my self-work. It’s also interesting because this anger doesn’t feel like the anger I’ve worked through before. It’s almost like, a shadow. Maybe it’s just shadow work. Or maybe its not my anger. I can’t really tell. Which also pisses me off.”
If you are processing anger, try my Anger Workbook to help facilitate healthy emotional release.
“Who are you angry at?” she asked.
I started to cry.
“I think,” I murmured, “I think I’m angry at me.”
“And what are you angry at yourself for?”
She was so calm and seemingly unaffected by my anger. Damn, I thought, this is cool — I’m safe. It’s safe for me to feel my anger and process it.
“I’m angry at myself, because I still think that at the root, it’s my fault we got divorced.”
“And maybe, it’s what I’ve been holding onto for almost a year. I think it’s why I haven’t really, truly let go of him.
“It is so much easier to be angry at him. It is so much easier to be the victim. Because as long as he was the one who ultimately decided — or asked — for a divorce, I get to be the one that was betrayed. I get to be the vulnerable, pitiful one. And as long as I’m the one that was left, as long as it was me who was abandoned, I get to have a valid reason for my rage.
“And I think that what I’ve intentionally omitted from the story of our divorce, is the part where I left him first.
“The part where we sat down in our Airbnb in Peru, across from each other having almost the same conversation we had months later when he asked me for a divorce in his brother’s basement, and he said, ‘I think we should go home and try to work this out and let everything go back to normal,’ and the part where I said, ‘I don’t think it will go back to normal. I think we need to take time apart — I think I need to be alone. And I think you need to finish this trip without me.’
“The part where I packed a suitcase of my things and booked a one-way ticket to Bali. The part where I said goodbye to him on the streets of Lima, and boarded a bus to the airport and watched him disappear into the night.
“The part where I left him first.”
For more about my divorce, read my memoir, “Where the River Flows.”
I started to weep.
“I haven’t forgiven myself for that.”
(If you are visual, below is a video telling this story. Otherwise, continue reading after the video for the rest of the story.)
This morning, I woke up and decided I wouldn’t do what I’ve previously done on this day.
I wouldn’t wallow. I wouldn’t sit in the sadness of our wedding song or look at old photos. I also wouldn’t avoid or push away my feelings. I’d do, what maybe, I could (oh how I wanted to say should) have done all along, which is sit with my grief, and honor it.
I pulled out my grief workbook — a workbook I made two years ago to help others with their grief, but in Rachel-fashion so adamantly avoided actually doing myself.
The first set of journaling prompts revolved around shock and denial — the first of the seven phases of grief (yes, seven — I like the seven phase model of shock & denial, pain & guilt, anger & bargaining, depression & sorrow, the upward turn, reconstruction & working through, then acceptance & hope).
One of the prompts asked,
“What do you need to do to integrate this experience into reality as something that has occurred in the past?”
Immediately I started to cry. I knew. I wrote,
“I have to live with the consequences of my actions. I have to take responsibility. And I have to forgive myself.”
I sat, then, with my hand on my chest, and wept.
I repeated out loud, “I am so angry at you Rachel,” and then replied, “and I forgive you. You didn’t know this would happen. You didn’t know how much it would hurt. You didn’t know this would hurt him. You didn’t know. I forgive you.”
I held myself, rocked back and forth, and cried.
After that, I sat down, and I wrote. I wrote and I wrote. I realized that the anger I feel towards myself protects me from having to really let go. Because the possibility of his forgiveness keeps us tethered, and until I forgive myself, I’ll hold onto the possibility that he’ll be the one to forgive me — that he’ll come back and say it's all ok.
So today, I’m forgiving myself.
I’m releasing this part of the rope, cutting this part of the tether, and letting myself off the hook.
I’m setting myself free.
