Open your eyes and save yourself Princess

I was previously married to a terrible husband and that’s the plain truth of it. Not a terrible person, but a terrible husband. A man can be a good person and a bad husband, they are different things. You can of course get your garden variety bad man, bad husband, but my ex, like most human beings, was more complex than that. Not to say he was a truly good person either! He could have been, he had the ingredients but chose a different path. One I guess to him looked easier, but ultimately, was his ruin.

Learning from it all – that has been one of the most important parts of the picking-up-the-pieces process. At least then something good comes out of it.

It was important to me to find a path through the pain and confusion that would lead to a wiser, stronger, and more powerful me. That’s where I wanted to be on the other side of the heartbreak. Forgiving I’ve found to be a significant goal along this path. Mostly, forgiving myself for not seeing plainly what a mess I was in, because of him, the destructive tornado that he was in my life.

Before I got there, to that realisation, I spent a fair amount of time in shock and denial, desperately hanging onto an old dream, like a Titanic survivor to a floating log.  

I believed the dream of what our love could be was still alive, but it had died a long slow painful death, right before my eyes, over a number of years. Eyes that refused to see the truth and hung onto what was in my heart only, I truly loved him you see, unconditionally. What a fool, nothing like a fool in love they say.

You’ll never find me apologising for loving hard though, I don’t believe being capable of unconditional love and blind loyalty are characteristics anyone should be sorry for. Betraying someone who loves you like that, now that’s what a person should feel shame and sorrow for.

Do you believe in the cards? I do, the one that kept coming up for me while navigating the wreckage of my broken marriage was the Eight of Swords. How right that card was. It pictures a woman blindfolded, bound and encircled by eight swords. She appears trapped but the binds are loose and the gaps in the swords are big enough for her to pass through. It’s up to her to release herself, remove her blindfold and escape her predicament. The card will tell you the path to her salvation is knowing her intuition sees what her eyes cannot, and that she can save herself.

Opening your eyes, seeing what you really don’t want to and starting to envisage a completely different life and future. Scary, really, really scary!  But the alternatives staying blindfolded, trapped and unhappy. Hell no! I’m strong, I know I’m strong, I’ve had to be strong before. There was nothing else for it but to feel the fear and with my heart-pounding in my throat, just keep on grappling for the blindfold ties and the gap in the swords. I had help, there were guiding hands from true friends and angels but ultimately, it’s only you alone who can choose to take off the blindfold and keep moving one step at a time forward – hoping it’s in the right direction. Praying for guidance.