12 Months…

One year ago today my face lay on the hardwood floor.

My body lifeless.
My mind numb.
My life over.

I lay there asking God, why? Why? How could this happen to me? What have I done to deserve this? I had loved this man for 16 years. I had 3 babies at home, 2 of them barely a year old. I didn’t have $20 to my name. No job. No access to bank accounts. I had no dippers. No formula to feed my babies. No rent money. No car.
Nothing.
Literately I was left with nothing.
No income and no way to take care of my children.

I lay there with the distinct feeling that the world had screeched to a slow and bitter end. That the past 2 years of losing our home, losing a baby, losing everything I had spent my whole life working for was just a prerequisite to this moment. My life had lead up to this: my lifeless body lying in a puddle of tears on the floor.

Then without knowing how, or from where, strength arrived. The will to survive. The desire to live and not be swallowed whole by this massive cloud of darkness took over.

It must be similar to when you’re in a desert about to die of dehydration. Your children strapped to your back, when the will to fight to the death to find the oasis consumes your mortal body. Something inside you takes over and the belief that there is actually an oasis begins to grow seeds of hope in your shattered heart. In the end it may just be an oasis, a mirage, but that is better than the alternative of sitting and waiting to die.

So you strap your children to your back and you stand up and you put one wobbly foot in front of the next, and before you know it you have walked a mile. And one day you reflect and you have come farther than you ever dreamed a possibility. Then by some miracle you notice that your children are walking beside you and they are no longer hungry or thirsty. You are providing for them. They are ok. Happy even. You are in fact surviving. You are reaching the oasis.

One year ago today my life was black.

I look back on the past 12 months and even I am amazed. When I was a girl I envisioned this life. I knew I was capable of becoming somebody. Of rising to the top. Of surviving the unthinkable. I knew that deep inside me I possessed the ability to be whatever it was I set my mind to.

Somewhere along the way between a girl and a women, I lost that confidence and that dream. I gave in to life and gave up on me.

For a long time.

Oh what 12 months can do! Somehow I managed to feed and clothe my children with no income. Somehow I managed to find a job in a jobless economy. Somehow I managed to make it from day to day, and month to month. I honestly don’t know how. I had no idea I was capable of such primal survival.

Today was my second day at a job I won out of sheer determination and drive. I set my sights high a long time ago. Higher then I even dare dream. I dreamed that one day I would have a great, powerful job. Where I would travel the county pitching executives, that I would be a force to be reckoned with.

I got that job.
I GOT THAT JOB!
I worked my ass off, and I got it.

I’m providing for my children. I’m getting them back into a house after suffering for a year in a tiny apartment. I started from zero. Literately. Thank god for family and friends that held my hand and supported me those first long difficult months.

I’m standing on my own two feet. I’m stand in heals! My shoulders back and my head high. I’m not there by any means, but in truth, I can’t believe what a difference 12 months has made.

Thank god. This is the life I dreamed of as a girl.

This is my life.