Writing Prompt From Therapy
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” 1 Corinthians 13:4 - 7
Justin,
I’ve been telling you this all week, but I really can’t believe that it has been 10 whole human years that we’ve been doing life together, Babe. TEN YEARS!?!
The past 2 years, for me, were especially rough. It seemed like we couldn’t get on the same page with anything. I blocked you on every social media site, blocked your number for a few days & even went and secured my own apartment. I was done. You were done. WE were done. So I thought…..
Through all my years of praying and building my connection with God, I can honestly say that I have never got on my knees and prayed for anything the way that I prayed for our marriage. For You. For Us. Many nights while you were sleeping peacefully I was literally in a spiritual war and crying my eyes out because even though we laid together every night I still felt so alone.
These feelings really intensified after Ros, your beautiful mother, left us so unexpectedly. Nothing could’ve prepared me as a wife how to support you during that time, but I knew that you needed me more than ever, which is why I was very disturbed when you shut me out. You shut down completely. Day after day the kids and I watched you wake up, get dressed & leave and come back at bed time. You became very annoyed when after about a year of this, I spoke on it. “Kyrei is missing her bedtime stories with you. Can you try to be here at least when she goes to bed?” Was my first hint I dropped that I was kind of sick of the getting home at 9PM shit. You did start to come home a little bit early, but it didn’t take long for you to get caught back up in your busy life outside of home.
Watching you grieve was painful, but I at least thought that we would pull together and get through it as a family. Instead I was left to nurture a heart-broken husband, reopened wounds from a son who also lost his mother & a daughter who was trying to process death, all while grieving & trying to hold a smile for us all. I was asking God, “my nigga WHO told you I could hold my family down like this?!” The shit was draining, but at the end of every night I always prayed.
That was heavy, right?
While I was praying for us, I was also deep in therapy. It was then that I really learned that even though we had some hurdles & bumps, the biggest elephant in our marriage was my mental health. Me being inconsistent with my medication a lot of times altered the fuck out my reality. It deepened my depression & intensified my anger. I felt myself slowly losing control of my reality all while still trying to be a good wife & mother. I was literally just going through the motions of waking up, making sure ya’ll had food & drinking a hell of a lot of wine. My therapist helped me understand that although you had some things going on, I was also a contributing factor to my own mental demise and unhappiness in our marriage. Now can you really imagine me in therapy hearing that shit? :(
It was a tough pill to swallow, but I told myself (and my therapist) that I would dig deep to find my own happiness & purpose. Through some intense sessions of Written Exposure Therapy ,that literally left me numb sometimes, I started to really open my eyes and make lemonade (see what I did there) out of all the lemons that we were handed. As a matter of fact, I’m sure you’ve probably guessed it by now, but this writing prompt is from a session. Yikes.
Fast forward to July 23, 2023. My love for you has reached new depths and has never been stronger. I am so deeply sorry for anytime I ever made you feel like I didn’t love you, when I was really just projecting the disdain that I had for myself. We’ve transformed the difficult experiences that we faced together into so much love and resilience; I couldn’t imagine my life without my soul mate, my hero, my Husband.
I love you deeply.
Still Healing,
Kareisha
