Living Happily Ever After
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Don’t Think…Do

Date: October 2, 2013  Author: Andrea Merriman

I called a Colorado friend to report my husband’s insane suggestion. Instead of agreeing with me she said, “I think that’s a great idea! Are you coming?”

I should have known to call someone else–this friend had suggested I visit several times since I moved. We hung up, I shook my head, and thought the matter was closed.

But my thoughts wouldn’t let it be.

The hate mail and nasty emails have dwindled. It has been several months since I’ve received anything from anyone in that regard. The used Subaru I’d driven away from Colorado in is no more (what can I say, it was old and very used.) One of the two dogs I’d driven away from Colorado with had died. Two of the four children I’d brought to Utah with me are now “grown up” and “gone”–one is living in Spain, the other has moved out and is in college. I’m working at a different job, for a different organization, than the one that brought me here. I’m remarried to someone else. It has been long enough that the events of 2009 almost don’t even feel like they happened to me, but to someone else.

Why not?

Isn’t it ABOUT time?

So I told my husband I’d go. And before I knew it, he’d booked airplane tickets.

I tried not to think about it.

“Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy…You simply must do things.” (Ray Bradbury)

 

Time

Date: July 12, 2011  Author: Andrea Merriman

“No date on the calendar is as important as tomorrow.” (Roy W. Howard)

Tomorrow.

July 13.

Two years to the day I got divorced, loaded my youngest children and two dogs in my new-to-me-but-used Subaru and drove to Utah without a backward glance at my home, neighborhood, former life or home state of Colorado.

A new beginning.

That’s what I had to make.

A new life.

That’s what I was desperate to create.

A few nights ago, my middle son reminded me the anniversary of an important day was coming. “Mom, in just a few days we will have lived in Utah TWO YEARS. Can you believe it? July 13!” (I guess that date had an impact on my children that I hadn’t realized.)

I can’t believe I’ve lived in Utah two years,although thankfully, the number of times I dial “303″ when trying to call a Utah number is dramatically decreasing. But what I really can’t believe is all that we’ve experienced, all that we’ve been blessed with, in such a short amount of time.

It has been QUITE a ride.

“The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.” (Albert Einstein)

And THEN I Cried

Date: March 14, 2010  Author: Andrea Merriman

Driving from Colorado to Utah in my Subaru, I tried not to think.  But since I was also trying not to cry, really, the only thing I could do WAS think.  I thought about a variety of things, as I’ve already detailed, interspersed with pep talks to myself:  ”You CAN do this, Andrea. Just keep driving.”

I didn’t cry because I felt I had to be strong for my kids.  Of course I’d let them see me cry in all of this.  The grief and trauma we’d lived through had been so intense, all of us had cried.  All of us had cried a lot. We had cried together.  We had cried alone. At that point, in 2009, trust me:  the Merriman family cornered the market on tears (and tissues) and I knew that.

I guess one reason I felt like I couldn’t cry was because I had to be strong for my kids–because I remembered what I had needed when the family I grew up in lost our dad.  I was devastated, overwhelmed, scared, and a host of other feelings and emotions.  And after the initial grief, what I wanted and needed at that time was for my mom to be strong for me.  I needed to feel confident in her, in our future and that our family would survive in spite of our challenge.  And she was.  She was strong in the face of her tears.  She was stronger and more courageous than I ever imagined she was capable of being.  And she helped us not only survive, but thrive.  I felt my children deserved that same thing from me.

I also didn’t cry as I drove because I was afraid if I gave in and started, I might never be able to stop.

I sort of felt like I was holding back the walls of the Red Sea in Cecil B. Demille’s epic movie, “The Ten Commandments.”  Remember the scene? Where the Lord is miraculously holding back gigantic walls of water of the Red Sea as the Children of Israel crossed to the other side?  That was me.  Trying to hold back the walls as I drove.

Miraculously, I had done it for the first four hours of the drive.

But in the movie, at some point, the walls came crashing down.  And that is what exactly happened to me.

Of course, unexpectedly!

Halfway through the drive I looked in my rear view mirror and realized both boys were asleep.  At the same time I hit my former hometown of Grand Jct., Colorado, and without any warning to my psyche thoughts of the girl I had once been; my optimism for life, the future and eternity; my hopes, dreams and expectations; my childhood memories and everything else came flooding into my mind.  And the walls came crashing down.

I CRIED.

I cried for that little girl, all she had dreamed of, and for what she had ended up with instead.

I cried for my children, for all they had dreamed of and for all they had had, and for what they had ended up with instead.

I cried for my parents–that they weren’t here anymore and I was all alone, without even them to rely on.  I cried, wondering what they would think of me now and the mess I was in, if they only knew.

I cried because I was alone.

I cried because I was so afraid, even though I desperately tried not to be.  (I just couldn’t help myself on that one.)

I cried for all that was ahead of me in the immediate future, the next year, and the next 5-10-and 50 years of life.  My TOTALLY unexpected life.

And I don’t know how, but I kept driving.

Too Much Time To Think

Date: March 12, 2010  Author: Andrea Merriman

“Eight hours is too much time to think and my thoughts are definitely too hard to think!” That was another thought I had as the miles rolled by under the Subaru, driving from Colorado to Utah to begin a new life–thanks to divorce and other things.

My mind was doing a 19-years-in-review recap as I drove, and given the new perspective I had on those years (thanks to the revelations my former spouse made to me on March 18, 2009), every memory was tainted.  Even after the almost four months I’d had to think, to question, and to attempt to process, I was still coming up with new and more questions.  I was grateful, then, that I’d had almost four months to try to understand everything (as difficult as those four months had been.)

In fact, and believe it or not, almost one year later, the questions are still coming.  Someone recently asked me something I’d never thought of before.  I don’t know the answer to it.  I have to wonder: is that what the rest of my life is going to be? Another 50 years of random memories surfacing, causing questions that I will never know the answer to?  An interaction with someone that results in a question that somehow, in all the thinking I’ve done, I have never thought of?  And even if I could ask the question and get an answer…how do I really trust that the answer is the truth?

The answer to that is just one reason I got divorced.

As my sister said to me, when we chatted about things we’ve experienced in life that we never anticipated, “You are THE LAST person I EVER would have thought would get divorced!”  I totally agreed with her.  I am the last person I ever expected it to happen to too.  But in life, unexpected things happen.

As I drove, I wondered how everything was going to work out.

My greatest concern was, and is, for my children.  I wondered HOW they were ever going to rise above the life they were completely innocent of in every way?  I mean, my children and I are completely innocent of any wrongdoing–THAT, I know.  But they had landed in a situation they hadn’t chosen in any way, shape or form.  They hadn’t even gotten to choose their dad!  I had done that for them.

Everything I have done in all of this has been in an effort to do what I think is right (the way I’ve always tried to live my life) and to do what I think is best for my children.  Those two principles have guided my every action and reaction.  There are many who disagree with my choices, with some of the things I’ve done–or not done.  I’ve lost some friends over it.  I’ve been misjudged on some of it.  But pardon me for putting my kids first, even at my own expense, and for having the courage to do what I felt was right!  How dare anyone expect me to do anything else?

My thoughts turned, again, to my children and the evening of March 18, 2009.  When I had gathered my family together for the last time, as a united family, and let my children hear, from the mouth of the destroyer, the destruction he, the head of our family and home, had brought upon all of us.

I remembered how he sat alone in a chair, across the room from the rest of us, and told our children what he had done and what he anticipated the consequences would be.  They were as shocked as I had been when I’d been told earlier that day. It took a moment or two for them to comprehend what he was saying and they looked to me, with shock and horror on their faces, questioning with their eyes what they had just heard.  They looked to me for confirmation.

How do you shatter your children’s lives?  How do you destroy their hopes and dreams?  How do you ruin their world?  How do you do ANY of that?

How do you answer even a question about that? All I could do was sit there, with tears streaming down my face, my heart more shattered and broken than I knew a heart could be and still keep beating.  And I guess that was answer enough.

One of the children got up, crossed the room, and hugged their dad as they cried.  The other children spontaneously joined them and they all huddled, hugged and cried together.  We used to end our family prayers each day with a “group hug.”  But like everything else, those days were over.

I sat alone on the couch and watched the whole thing.

Then the destroyer got up, walked out the door, and left our family alone.

I was alone with my children.

Eight Hours To Think

Date: March 10, 2010  Author: Andrea Merriman

Like I said, I drove off in my trusty Subaru without a backward glance to the life I had lived for nearly 20 years in Denver, Colorado.  It had been a good life, with many great experiences and good memories, which made it all the more difficult,and poignant, for me.  I had eight hours to think.

I couldn’t help but reflect on who I’d been when I arrived there–a college graduate as of the day before I arrived; a newlywed with hopes and dreams and my whole life ahead of me; I had had a mom visiting me there through the years.  I realized how much I had learned and grown in Denver.  I realized I had, really, grown up in Denver.

I had entered the workforce and learned valuable lessons; I had learned to be a wife; I had learned to work to have what I thought was a real and great marriage; I had become a mother; I had served in the community; I had served in my church and had learned what it meant to be a Christian and to live a Christian life; I had made friends; I had traveled the world and had life-enriching cultural experiences; I had informally continued my education; participated in book clubs and learned about new things.  And I knew all of that was ending.  Actually, it was already over.

I had discovered my marriage had been built on lies and a sham of epic proportions (in my little world) with its tentacles reaching into every aspect of my personal, public, religious, and family life; I was re-entering the workforce; and my mom was dead.  Everything I’d ever known or had, it seemed, was gone.

I had been unrighteously judged and accused of things I had never known about much less participated in by literally hundreds of people who knew me (and who should have known better) and by countless other hundreds of strangers (that is all I can admit to myself, who knows? It could be in the thousands, really.)  Except for the support of a very small network of friends and family who had not betrayed me and abandoned me in my hour of need, I was alone.  And I felt more alone than I knew one person could feel.

I don’t know how I would have done it, how I could have driven off to face my new opportunities, had I not had a very important epiphany.  You see, I had my two youngest children with me in the backseat.  So I couldn’t cry, wail, or do anything else that felt natural and right, to me, in that moment.  I couldn’t upset them like that.  Their life seemed like it was going to have enough challenges ahead without me adding to them.  All I could do was think.  Eight hours to think.

Thoughts ran through my mind at warp speed, so many, so quickly I don’t know that I processed them all.  But I do remember wondering to myself, “How can I do this?  How can this be happening?  How can I be leaving my LIFE?  How can I be abandoning all I have become and built over the past almost 20 years?  How can this be real?”  And then it hit me like a bolt of lightening. I won’t have a scar from it like Harry Potter, but it has been forever seared in my mind.

I realized I could do it, and had done it with as much grace and dignity as I could muster, I could drive off without a backward glance, I could be an example to my children and show them how you carry on and do what you have to do (even do what you don’t want to do) with your head held high, even when the direction seems impossible because…I had been blessed (yes, I realize now, BLESSED) with my neighbors.

My neighbors were good people.  But some had been affected by my former spouse’s choices (and those that hadn’t, for some reason, jumped on the bandwagon anyway) and had gone from being like family to me to turning in to absolutely the most hateful and hostile people I have personally ever had the opportunity to know!

I reflected on my neighbors and realized they had a purpose in my life.  I saw them for what they were to me–a blessing, in their own way.  Corrie Ten Boom, author of “The Hiding Place,” was sent to a German concentration camp.  Her story taught me about gratitude and choosing to give thanks in all things for SOME thing.  And to look for the tender mercies that come to each of us in our lives.

In her trying and miserable existence, one day the only thing Corrie and her sister could find to be grateful for was fleas!  It seemed a little ridiculous but they chose to be thankful for the fleas they lived with.  (After all, gratitude is always a choice, isn’t it?)  They even prayed to God and expressed their gratitude for the fleas.  And do you know what? Those fleas ended up saving Corrie’s life when Nazi soldiers wouldn’t enter their barracks for inspections–because of the fleas!

I haven’t had the chance to thank those neighbors for being true fleas to me until now.  But thank you.  I mean that, sincerely, from the bottom of my heart.

Each of you made it easier for me to do what I had to do, and to do it with gratitude, and I will always be grateful.

Onward I drove.  Eight hours to think.