Forty

Today — December 29th, 2020 — is my 40th birthday.

20 years ago I found this album by Shawn Colvin after hearing “A Whole New You” in a mall in northern Virginia. I was almost completely healed from the heartbreak of a first love, and this song felt significant. Like it was expressing how I had found a way to stand again after feeling devastated from losing who I thought was the love of my life.

I just re-discovered the song “One Small Year” today, which is from the same album.

A year ago, I told my husband of nearly ten years that I wanted to separate.

This request to separate launched my life onto an airborne roller coaster ride. Some events I have been public about, others not so much. I reached out to people and received a lot of support, but it wasn’t enough. And my faith was gone — had been gone for a long time, despite not publicizing this. I was in the throes of my dark night of the soul.

Many days, I just wanted to die. To simply stop existing. I wasn’t suicidal, but I was barely alive. I cried so much and ate so little and lost 20 pounds and I wished it wasn’t like that. I was so tired of crying. And then feeling better. And then it hitting me all over again.

After months of emotional turmoil, and looking for different ways to fill a relentless, raging emptiness, I was done. Something had to change and it had to change immediately or I was going to self-destruct. So I retreated inside myself. I decided to love myself on my own. To give myself the love and attention that I had so been craving from everywhere outside myself. I became my own partner, my own love, my own light. I found myself, and I found that God was inside me in a deeper way than I had understood. And maybe my faith is no longer the same, but I understand it better. And this might concern some people, but it’s just the way it is. After everything I have experienced this year, and after 39 years living in fear of disappointing people by simply being myself, I realize that the only way to live fully is to do it authentically, without lying to yourself, much less anyone else.

It has actually been a very big year. That 366th day made it seem extra long. But maybe in another 20 years I will look back and say, “That went by so quickly. Where did the time go?” Maybe we all will.

I am happy to still be here now, and alive, and thriving. I am glad to have friends on this journey.

It has taken all of me to get here and I am better for it.