The One I Don't Want to Talk About

So...it's August of 1995. A good 6mths after the BREAK UP and I have decided that what I really need is a night off work and a GNO (girls night out). So, who you gonna call right? One of my oldest and bestest friends, Kellie...that's who! So we go out and have a cocktail or two and I decided that I needed to run to the store at the other end of the strip mall to get some gum or breath mints. So I am walking and approaching the grocery and as I near the entrance of the automatic door, I can see that a man and a very pregnant girl are heading out as I am heading in. Then I stop in my tracks. It's all happening so fast. It's him and he is holding hands with a very, very pregnant her.

I am frozen, I can't move. I am just standing there looking at him and he is looking at me and I am at a COMPLETE loss of words. I say nothing and he says, "Hi" and for a moment, he stalls. Then the girl is looking strangely at me as she walks by with him kinda like why are you standing there with your mouth hanging open staring at me? When I hear him kinda whisper to her, "that's Lisa, keep walking". So I am standing there looking stupid and really feeling like a dumb ass. I am sure my mouth is still hanging wide open and I am unable to form any words. But my mind is racing, it's doing flip flops! It's doing the math. August backwards to February...that's 6mths and that girl looks TEN months pregnant.

So I needed some answers obviously and so I called his mother. She hesitates to tell me but says I deserve to know the truth of the matter. The girl is someone he worked with and yes, she was due any day and yes it was obvious that she was pregnant when we were still together. And yes they were getting married. So not only was my FOUR YEAR relationship over, but he got a chick he worked with knocked up and was marrying her instead. This is really the part that put me over the edge. So he was cheating on me. THE. WHOLE. FOUR. YEARS. WITH. HER. And let me tell you, once this knowledge was shared with my close friends, they began to sing like songbirds on a bright sunny morning. Not only did he cheat with some girl he worked with, but he cheated with just about anyone that walked around and had two legs and had a vagina. I began hearing accounts of people he slept with the entire time we were together. Devastating. Completely devastating. You think that the person you love is one person and then find out it's all been one big fat lie. It was REALLY more than I could handle.

This is how the Grand Canyon was formed. And for the next year I would try to fill that hole back in with everything I could get my hands on that was bad for me. I already shared that I tried filling it with booze and men, and that it didn't work. I tried to fill it by befriending people that I knew were only using me, but I didn't care because I needed to feel accepted, even if it was by some complete loser. I needed to be liked and wanted and the only way I could feel good about myself was by starving myself, getting drunk to drown out the pain and surrounding myself with people that were using me on a daily basis. I couldn't stand to be alone and I would rather hang out with some total stranger that I just met, than to be alone. But, being alone meant I would have to deal with the pain and feel it and I couldn't allow myself to feel it. So I stayed away from the pain as much as I could by staying drunk.

Ironically how does a person that is drinking so much also have so much time to pray? I think deep down, we all have some kind of fundamental knowing inside that we are part of something greater than we and there is some kind of higher power that we all come from. Every night I was crying out to God asking Him to stop the pain and help me through this mess and that is when it happened one night. I was feeling an immense physical and emotional pain over all of this. I was about to fall asleep and I remember literally aching inside, like my heart was truly broken. My whole body was wracked with grief and feelings of deep sadness when all of a sudden, this beautiful pearly, glowing Angel appeared out of nowhere. She kissed me on the cheek and told me not to cry anymore that everything was going to be ok. I suddenly felt all warm and fuzzy inside for the first time in MONTHS. She was as real as could be and she was in my bedroom telling me I was going to be alright. That night was the first night I slept that good since my birthday.

I'd like to tell you that immediately, my life got better, but it didn't. But slowly it did get better and that was a relief. This is due to the fact that right about this time, enter another kind of Angel. Angel on Earth kind of Angel. I'd rather like to think of them as roadblocks. I really think God sends people into our lives at exactly the right time to change the course of our trip just ever so slightly. And that's exactly what He did for me. He sent an Angel to reassure me of His love and to let me know I would survive and then He sent someone into my life that would certainly change my life forever. That will be shared in the next post. Things are gonna pick up and not be so depressing. I promise!