Living in fear limbo…

Fear Limbo is not a place to live.

It creates anxiousness, uncertainty, self doubt & sadness, just to name a few emotions. This theme has come up many times in my life. Today’s share topic is when I decided to get a divorce…

Recently I watched a scene from a tv show that really resonated with me, not because of the story line but because of the feeling that overcame me bringing me to tears. It brought me back to a time in my life when I was faced with making a decision that had been brewing for a long time that would impact not only me but my family. I didn’t need to weigh the pros or cons, for I had already done so for years, but I knew the ramifications of what would come in taking the necessary action. The thought of taking that action was paralyzing. I lived in what I call, fear limbo. The fear of the unknown of taking this action was overpowering at times. I doubted myself. I sabotaged myself. I denied the facts. I pretended things didn’t exist.  I sought therapy. I tried anti anxiety medication. I hired coaches. I saw psychics. I tried everything & anything to exhaust all avenues before making the ultimate decision. Deep down I knew that I would be making the right decision. I knew it was best for me & my family & I knew it would bring massive change. 

For so many years with my failing marriage I lived in fear limbo - would it ever get better? Or is this all there is? How could I make this change not knowing what the other side would be? When I started shifting my focus away from it somehow getting redirected from completely imploding, & put my focus on bettering me, every baby step led me to walking through the fear. 

I certainly wasn’t prepared for all that would follow, which I will share more about over time, but I recall the thoughts about taking action causing such anxiety & fear within me. I was in denial for a long time about my situation & increasingly the situation became worse & worse until the realization that for me, I had to walk through the fear to get to the other side. The other side was an unknown entity but living in the known wasn’t worth the squeeze anymore. It was slowly eating away at the inner core within myself where I was not questioning the situation but questioning myself & my decisions. I’d ask myself, Who am I? Is this all there is?  Why doesn’t it feel right?  Everyone & everything around me was becoming less & less worth the fight in its existing manner & it scared the hell out of me for a long time. 

Being so far removed from that experience now, I can clearly see how much I was suffering silently back then. Many people tell me how happy I look today, remarried with 3 teenagers, vs all those years ago. When they first started saying that to me I thought to myself “did I look that miserable? For I thought I was hiding it very well”.  Well, I did hide it very well & realized most people that I saw day to day never knew me when I was younger & those that knew me when I was younger never knew me when I was older. There was no comparison until there was one. I was living a life that did not make me feel happy or fulfilled. I tried to create the scenarios that would fill the empty voids but then that conflicted with the person that I am at my very core. I had many great memories from that time but many are snapshots that don’t tell the whole story.  I felt like a hypocrite. I felt fake & not authentic. I felt like an imposter, a fraud. & for me, that was no way to live.  Some people talk about having that ah-ha moment where there’s a shift.

Have you ever had an overwhelming feeling knowing you needed to make a choice, a choice no matter what cost?  It is years later & I still, at times, feel the loss from that decision. I am not sure if that ever goes away but it certainly ebbs & flows. They say major life events can wreak havoc on a person. A move, a marriage, a death, a new job, a divorce. When I worked for a major healthcare company in the behavioral health sector, we spoke about these life events often due to the impact it could cause on an employee’s productivity. I oversaw programs employers would purchase for employees to minimize the risk they would endure when an employee experienced a major life event & the impact it could cause to one’s emotional well being. When I look back at when I was about to embark on a major life change, I recall how much it was years in the making. It is not a decision that is made with a flip of a switch but one that is slow to cook. There wasn’t one catastrophic moment  that put the nail in the coffin, so to speak, but a series of catastrophic events that occurred over & over again. You mix that with how fear can come into play & it slows down the process even more. Fear has been a huge part of my life for some time now & with this decision, it took me a very long time to come to terms with what I knew my intuition was telling me. 

For most major life events there comes a choice. Do I accept this job? Do I make this move? Do I want to marry this person? But when it comes to a major life event like a divorce, you don’t ask yourself, Do I want a divorce? No one wants a divorce. A choice was made to marry this person & for some, to have children with . The pros & cons were already weighed. The make or break questions were already asked. So when you are faced with this life event, you begin to notice how you feel, & if you have children, how they are behaving &/or feeling. It is certainly not a comfortable task but one that is necessary as you embark on this major life change. Being open & honest with my adolescent children was a must for me & when their behaviors were too much for this novice mom to understand or respond to, I sought out support to assist me. I also did the same for myself. The road traveled wasn't easy by any means but at the end of the road when the dust settled and I could see the road ahead of me more clearly because those feelings of uncertainty of the unknown dissipated & the hope for a better healthhier future became stronger.