What happens for a lot of us, though, is Change. That's what happened to me a few years ago. One day I was going along, quite content with my complacent life, when the Big Guy upstairs decided to throw me one of his 110 mph curve balls. I was walking along when wham! I was sent reeling face down in the dirt. Shocked and stunned, I cried, “What just happened?” Life as I knew it was gone. I joined as one more statistic in the divorce department (again). As usual, I cried my share of tears (again). Now I know why the oceans are so salty - lovers' tears.
It's a funny thing about the body. It has just a certain amount of blood, and when the last drop is gone, it's gone. But tears, now that's a different story. You cry and cry and when you think you've cried your last, a whole new batch suddenly erupts. Tears are like grains of sand, or blades of grass, or stars in the sky; they are endless. I read somewhere that tears are the safety valve of the heart when too much pressure is laid on it. There is only one way to know when you have cried enough - when your heart tells you that you have. And it took a long, long time for mine to speak to me.
In the meantime, I did a lot of reading about co-dependency and realized we were dependent on each other for so long. We were always holding hands, or arm in arm. One rarely saw one of us without the other. Work aside, we were with each other 24/7. Now a lot of people might ask, “What's wrong with that?” For starters, we never had our own lives, our own interests, our own friends. We never gave each other time out. Neither one of us had our own space. We were so wrapped up in each other that we were literally smothering each other. Love is a very precious thing, but even sunshine burns if you get too much.
It is unfortunate that a lot of marriages break up within the first seven years (the seven-year itch syndrome), and most within 15 years. Another crucial time for marriage is the Mid-Life Crisis. When men go through their mid-life crisis, they usually go out and buy big boy toys, like a convertible, a boat, or a Harley. When women go through their mid-life crisis, they run to their hairdresser and get the works.
I was no exception (again).
