How Did I Get Here?

The gift of devastation was the best thing that ever happened to me.

My wonderful editor Lauren forwarded the following email from her colleague Michelle at Simon & Schuster:

First of all, what a lovely thing. Generous feedback from literary insiders is the highest water mark. They read for a living. When they evaluate your book, it is like cooking dinner for Ina Garten. Your mom might bullshit you about your beef tenderloin because you are her beloved spawn, but if Ina loves it, that’s praise from Caesar.

Second of all, I have been thinking about this part all day: “I honestly wonder if any woman in her 50s doesn’t ask “How did I get here?” no matter what their current life circumstances.”

That is the big story I nestled my small story inside. Yes, I wrote about getting divorced after 26 years, but I took a hard look at the systemic bricks that built such a flimsy house and, in some ways, that was a harder analysis than sorting out the disintegration of my marriage.

Here is my hunch: I suspect so, so many of us are wondering how we got here. You can fill in the blank on what “here” means. Maybe “here” occupies more than one category, because there are a lot of “here’s” in midlife: marriage, faith and church, ideologies, parenting older kids, career changes and disappointments, our bodies, adult friendships, shocks, unmet expectations, systems that built the house that are now in failure.

I got the gift of devastation which means I am now in a place of honesty, self and otherwise. But without question, I knew my house was in trouble before it collapsed but couldn’t face it. Frankly, I knew when several of my bricks were starting to deteriorate. Some of them were hopelessly compromised from the beginning. Turns out, maybe it wasn’t such a shock that the house crumbled.

There is a process that loosely goes: cognitive dissonance > knowing something hard internally > admitting that out loud > reordering your life in that truth.

Any one of those stages can get hung up and do. Probably millions of people experience cognitive dissonance, a mental discomfort between conflicting thoughts, feelings, or behaviors. In other words, that nagging tension that something is wrong. Something is off, something is not working, something doesn’t feel true. You know what I am talking about. Your inner gut check is saying: this feels bad. But disruption is a fierce deterrent, so it is possible, albeit uncomfortable and unhappy, to stay right there and pretend everything is fine. Without intentional examination, people can stay in this place for a lifetime.

With even a small amount of attention, that vague cognitive dissonance can turn into something you know: this thing is broken, this isn’t true, this isn’t working. Examination has revealed the thing for what it is. It’s no longer lurking on the edges of your consciousness. It isn’t a pesky tension you are shoving in the bottom drawer. You know it now.

Again, this is a stopping place for God knows how many women. Because now you know something needs to change, which is an even sadder parking lot than the first, because you are officially out of alignment. Your outward life doesn’t match your inner knowing, and living like that is exhausting and demoralizing…but it is familiar. And so we stay.

In my opinion, that third phase is the most courageous and holds the largest potential for positive change: admitting it out loud. You could not imagine how broken my marriage was for its final four years, and I did not talk to a single person about it until three months before its collapse. Not only was I terrified and confused and embarrassed, but saying it out loud made it real. As I wrote in AWAKE: “I wanted the story of my marriage, not my actual marriage.”

Who you admit your broken thing to matters, because some folks would prefer we protect the status quo, even against our own best interests. They would counsel us to stay, or stay quiet, or stay put, or stay out of it. No one likes disruption. Sometimes your freedom is an indictment on someone else’s prison, and that is an unwelcome mirror. Or it could be they are just averse to watching you lose before you gain.

But if you choose wisely, saying that hard thing you know to someone who loves you, who has proven to be trustworthy, can be the key that turns the lock. There it is. Out in the open. Someone else knows. Someone else is bearing witness. That alone soothes some of the fear. It is the first step toward bringing yourself back into alignment, and that relief cannot be overstated.

I called my best friends to my porch in April 2020 for an emergency meeting, and the dam finally broke. I told them how bad it was. I explained how confused I was. That I had no idea how to help or fix my husband, or myself. That we were in deep trouble. One friend gave me loving clarity: “It sounds like he is having an affair.” No, I said. Absolutely not, I said. My other friend said to get in the gutter with him and dig him out, and they would dig with me. I preferred that option because it suggested I had some control. But either way, I was no longer alone.

He and I started trying, or I thought we were trying, but it was too late. So I was escorted to “reordering my life around the truth” without my consent. I have asked myself a thousand times if I would have left if I didn’t find out, and I am pretty sure the answer is no. I would’ve continued to let him lie to me while I lied to myself. It felt like too much to lose. So when I say we can get hung up on any one of these stages, I mean it. I think I would have stayed even though I was firmly through three stages and knew my marriage was in failure.

Which brings me to reordering your life around the truth. I cannot describe what a wonder it is to finally get to this place, even if it means a complete ending of what you had. Although I would have never believed this five years ago, the gift of devastation was the best thing that ever happened to me. It kicked me into that final stage, out of cognitive dissonance and the loneliness of misalignment, out of knowing something I wasn’t brave enough to face, into living truthfully and honestly and joyfully, where the outside finally matched the inside. It was infinitely better to be alone than lonely in my own marriage. I know, I can’t believe it either.

I reordered my life, because I had to, but I am grateful every single solitary day that I was forced into it. I wish I would have had the courage to face the truth before it morphed into trauma. Listen to me: reorienting your life around the truth, around what you know you know, is worth everything you will have to release to get there. You cannot put a price on living in alignment. You are not “keeping the peace” by staying silent. You have to hand over every shred of peace to continue living a lie, and the cost is too high. The losses you are afraid of are not as powerful as the gains. You are going to have to trust me.

Walk your own story into the final stage. Choose it before it is chosen for you. Or before you live the rest of your days in misery. Have the self-honor to live in your own truth. Turns out, while many of us indeed ask “how did I get here?”, an honest examination would show that we probably know. We likely stopped at a stage when the fear overcame our discomfort, overcame our knowing, and we were unwilling to tolerate what the truth would require.

Freedom is worth it. Please believe me. Freedom is worth it. Keep going. Tell yourself the truth. Tell someone else the truth. Then go live in that truth. There is no more beautiful way to live the rest of your life, beloveds. You will not regret it, I promise.

Learn more about my memoir, AWAKE, and join me on my book tour.