Searching for Self & Beauty

You still believe that your pockets are an adequate substitute for a purse, but you are becoming less the girl that did her best to kiss her elbow so that she could become a boy and fast beoming more woman. Makeup hides well the scar beneath your right eye and the one on your right cheek, but even when you aren't turned to your good side, you are lovely. You've searched your soul many times for strength to soldier on and courage to walk through walls of fear and self doubt and you've dried your tears for him with the fingers that end in bitten and unladylike nails, now sit and shed a few for yourself. There's time enough for you, and no need to spread yourself out so thin amongst dishes, strewn toys, children, demanding maternal figures, and the inconsiderate soon-to-be ex-husband. You've found your hope in God, and strength and courage in yourself now search for beauty the kind only found in inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight. You've trained as men do and made changes in yourself to change the world around you now enjoy being a woman and nurture and be nurtured, give love and accept love, dance, sing, cry while knowing that true strength appears when you think yourself weak, and know that the changes you have made and continue to make already have changed and will continue to change the world, appreciate your own evolution with as great a passion as you have appreciated revolution. Search for your beauty and remember that it is of great worth in God's sight. 

Letter to a Love Long Gone that Will Never be Received

I came home and your things were gone, shock ached my stomach. I cleaned furiously and fought hard against the thoughts that screamed ALL THE SHIT YOU DID AND I NEVER PACKED MY THINGS! For days I wept without food or more than a two hour nap and reminded myself that I signed on for worse. I drew closer as you became more distant and clung hard to your promises of love enduring. I got up every couple of hours each night to console each child wondering where their Daddy was. I held tight their small hands while they prayed, with all the strength their little souls could muster, that their father would return home.
Late one Friday night I searched for a way to contact you until a little voice mentioned check the cel phone records online. I called the number I saw repeated over and over again, the number that made it through to lengthy conversation when my calls went to voicemail. In all certainty that it was an undisclosed number belonging to your mother, who could no longer bear to accept my calls to her home, your new home. I dialed and was shocked at the voice that responded. Your lover, whom I didn’t even know had crossed the bridge to friend.
Food lost its taste and more than that threatened revolt in my body. Sleep became a distant memory and if I managed to pass out for more than half an hour, I was coldly awakened to a sound I thought I heard, a sound I longed to hear, the door slam and your voice venture a curious hello. Every picture in my mind of her laying on the shirt I bought you, her fingers curled around the hair you grew out for me, your mouth dripping with lies and deceit, the kisses you offered to her, my kisses, when you told me you had no more to give, the string I pulled that unraveled lie after lie and the shocked faces and voices stunned into silence of all who knew us because they never thought you capable of this, I placed each of those thoughts into a black box and labeled it FORGIVE.
How could so much change in so little time? A few weeks ago we were creeping around hiding from each other when you came home, to scare the living daylights out of each other. Now you are insisting I pushed you out, I drove you crazy, I put you through hell, I act like you want to be married to me, no, you will not stop seeing her, there is no hope for our marriage, you want a divorce, you pay for everything, and you still love me. I am screaming, no one has screamed or yelled here in quite some time, I hate you, fuck you, I don’t need this shit, then apologizing profusely. I remind you I never knew it was okay to call you at work until I saw how often she did, that if you love her you will hate me because it is impossible to love both, we are being selfish and the children see it, we taught them well enough that they are disappointed in us, they must repeat to themselves three times a day, out loud, IT IS NOT MY FAULT. If you’d have allowed half the conversation for staying together that you give for crushing my hope, our future, and your plans for life without me we never would crashed here. You say you wanted to leave for months before you did, but you never left til you were in her arms, and how can you say that the affair had nothing to do with our divorce when it is the reason rest eludes me, that all the promises you made in a black tux facing me in all white, were broken and she is the reason I let go and without her I never would have. How can monogamy have nothing to do with adultery? You say you still want so much to be friends and yet in the time when I need your friendship more than I ever have, you turn your back and offer cruel words. You took no prisoners, killed what I held sacred and salted the it’s once hallowed and fertile ground. You offered no quarter. I can’t seem to stop calling you, and writing you, and even changing your name in my phone to adulterer was to no avail. I placed my last kiss upon your lips and you asked what was I doing. The babes prayed harder.
I have prayed harder than ever before, and found God more real than I ever thought possible, and know certainly that since my legs are too weak to hold me I am enabled to fly. The frightful image of the earth being removed from beneath me has been replaced by the knowledge that there were signs I chose not to read. I held a boy to the standard of a man and the light I shined on his selfishness caused him to avert his eyes, I learned that words spoken cannot be taken back and you can sweep as much as you like but their ashes remain. I learned that there is no excuse for cold and harsh no matter how you feel, and tried to teach you that our feelings are indicators and not road signs to be followed. You call the children less, you see them least when they need you most, my cautions are threats to you, so I have learned to shut my mouth and I can’t stand in the gap and pull you up as a father because you have pushed away my hand. I have learned that all I can offer you is silence and help only when you request it. I have learned that my truth has no place in the world of fantasy and lies you have created. I have learned to shut my mouth and open my heart to God in prayer, that he will send to those children the father you refuse to be and the man they deserve, who they can follow in trust that though he may stumble, and though he may even fall, he will get back up and lead them out of the city of sin and destruction we brought them to. I have learned it easier than I ever dreamed to repay each cruelty with more kindness than the hurt you intended. Kindness is easily offered because no matter what you say it hurts no more. The injury of a cold to the immune system is nothing when you’ve faced disease that warranted death. No weapon formed against me shall prosper. I have learned not to expect your help that I will have to be a bigger woman and a better mother to take up the slack in the family chain. I have learned to sing the songs I begged you to sing, the songs my heart longed to hear from you, and you denied. I sing them loudly to myself. I have learned that tears are not a sign of weakness, nor are they an act of contrition.
You tell me again and again that I deserve better, I wondered why you wouldn’t give it, now I have set off in search to find it, and know with certainty that I will. It’s now as involuntary as breathing not to call you, you are gone from my thoughts, and my heart is healing like bones, so much stronger for the fractures. I will let you believe you are in control, it seems necessary as air to you. You can even believe you still love me. I am no longer the brook you drink change from. I feel no relief, and take no tiny bite of joy, in the knowledge that your body will ache with regret, much more than mine ached from your absence and bled from the injuries you inflicted. I never told you that you will curse your mother for birthing you when you think of what you’ve done, and you will cry seas for the hearts you broke, the family you destroyed, and the unhappiness you heaped on your shoulders til they broke, until oceans covet the depth of your misery. No, instead I simply bet you two hundred dollars that you would beg me back. I will not tell you that I will never afford you the opportunity and all the souls in hell pity you if you attempt to steal it. My once beloved, these are words you shall never receive, but would cherish their severity and harshness if you did. For what I have left for you is a sentence worse than hatred to me, worse than death, it is forgotten. You will exist to me in name and the DNA of my children alone, and for that I will pray that God forgives you for the sins you still commit and haven’t fear enough of the Lord to repent for yourself. I will pray he offers you the mercy and compassion you didn’t offer me, and that you not reap what you have sown until you are strong enough to carry its load. I pray that you receive that strength while your heart still beats. I know that God loves you more, even now, than I ever could have and he will answer that prayer. I will pray it faithfully, because I know that God is acting as witness between you and the wife of your youth and will not hear your prayers or gladly accept you offering in place of your obedience. As for you, in terms of all that you once meant to me, the memories of us, our pledges of commitment, our kisses, and our love, have been replaced with the love my children and love of the strength in my hands, the sway of hips, the swagger in my step, the love for my God, free from concern of husband, the love of freedom and singularity, the love of resurrection, love for me without the doubt of my worth you pried into my self-image. I am a phoenix risen from the ashes, you are the all too quickly dissipated smoke from a fire never meant to sustain nor scorch my soul.