Heather's Story

When I was young, I was extremely insecure. Most of the time, I felt like I was a square peg trying desperately to fit into a round hole. I felt... different from the other girls my age. I didn’t like the things they liked – in fact, I found the typical activities of other girls a bit boring. As a child, I had never been interested in Barbie’s and tea-sets... or boy-bands, make-up, hair-styles and the latest fashions. I was, from a young age, creative…an adventurer. I was interested in tree-houses and forts and horse riding. I loved racing my BMX bike down muddy, rain soaked tracks on the small farm where we lived. My pets were rats, spiders, snakes and a black pig called Hamlet. I spent much of my time outdoors. I would play imaginary games where I was Robinson Crusoe – stuck on a desert island. Or I would throw myself, fully clothed, into the swimming pool – and pretend I was drowning after a shipwreck. I loved climbing trees, playing with the farm animals and having mud fights – or even better – rotten apricot fights with my best friend, Sonja. In fact, it seemed like the only time I could be found indoors was either when I was playing my piano – or drawing pictures which were both things that I loved (and still love) to do.
On week days, I would arrive at school with bruises and scrapes on my legs from climbing (and falling), my hair in an untidy plait, my skirt unfashionably below my knees – and the other girls would shake their heads and say: “Heather, you’re such a tomboy! You’re so not like a girl!”.
Those kinds of remarks confused me. I wasn’t quite sure what I should be doing in order to ‘become more like a girl’. Should I give up my passions and my craving for adventure? Should I force myself to do ‘girly’ things – like sew, or arrange flowers, or preen in front of the mirror for hours? Should I paste boy-band posters on my bedroom wall – or practice French kissing on my pillow? I didn’t want to do any of those things – and so, an outcast I remained amongst other girls my age.
Unlike my school peers, I didn’t have any boyfriends. I was never invited out on dates and when the school Valentines dance came around every year, I would always end up going alone. Guys just didn’t seem to be interested. They were interested in the beautiful, popular, ‘girly’ girls at school; the confident girls with perfect figures and perfect hair who wore strawberry lip-gloss and wafted around the school corridors in a haze of perfume.
I longed for affirmation and acceptance from a boy. I used to wish, with all my heart, that I would receive a Valentines day card or a rose from a secret admirer. I wished that a ‘Knight in Shining Armor’ would come and ‘rescue’ me from my insecure life. Somebody brave and strong who would affirm me and tell me the words I had always longed to hear whilst growing up: “You’re beautiful just the way you are – and I love you so much!”.
It’s not that I was short on affirmation as a child. My mother often affirmed me and always told me that she loved me. But my father, whose attention and affirmation I so desperately craved, was distant and silent. To this day, my dad has never managed to say “I love you” to my sister - or myself. And he has certainly never said “you’re beautiful”.
I think that there is a deep link between fathers and the self-esteem of their daughters. I think that my father’s indifference and his inability to affirm his daughters played a definite role in my being so needy of male acceptance and attention.
And so, one day, I met *Sean. At twenty six, Sean was ten years my senior – but I was mesmerized by him. He seemed to be the epitome of a brave and strong knight. He was confident, good looking, a partner in his own business – and he was never short of male friends or female admirers.
I knew that a ‘handsome knight’ like Sean would never be interested in a plain-jane tomboy like myself. And so, I made a decision. I would turn my back on Tomboy Heather – and I would set out to become a pretty ‘girly-girl’... so that maybe, with a lot of hard work, Sean might see something beautiful about me – might be attracted to me – might even ask me out on a date.
And so, the plan to kill off creative, adventure-loving Tomboy Heather began.
The first thing I did was embark upon a very strict rabbit food diet in order to loose some weight. Not that I was fat – but I certainly didn’t consider myself thin enough to be acceptable in the eyes of a potential knight. Then I hi-lighted my long, brown hair with blonde streaks – and spent lots of time in front of the mirror, teasing and spraying it to perfection. It didn’t stop there. When I overheard Sean mention how he liked women to ‘dress sexy’, I went on a shopping spree and invested in a new wardrobe for the new and improved version of myself. Short skirts, tight and revealing tops, high-heel shoes – all the things that Tomboy Heather hated - were what ‘new & improved’ Heather purchased.
I was serious about this metamorphosis. I was tired of the rejection I had endured as Tomboy Heather – it was time, I reckoned, to ‘grow up and change’.
Around this time, friends of mine had introduced Sean to our church and I was over the moon with delight when Sean decided to sign up as a member. He had quite a sordid past as it turned out. Most of his 26 years had been spent partying, getting drunk and sleeping with a scary variety of women. However, he promised that he was going to commit to God and turn over a new leaf – and everybody celebrated. Especially me.
My church friends encouraged Sean, bought him a new Bible and prayed with him regularly. I usually found a way to be at those prayer sessions too. I wanted to be close to Sean. His sordid past intrigued me – rather than bothered me. He was, I reasoned, a ‘man of the world’ who had truly experienced life. Someone I could look up to.
And then, one day, shortly after my seventeenth birthday, my friends organized a camping weekend at a river resort. I was invited – and so was Sean. And that weekend, to my utmost amazement and delight – Sean pulled me aside and told me that he was attracted to me and that he wanted to begin a relationship.
As far as I was concerned – my plan had worked! Tomboy Heather – the wild, creative adventurer – would never have received attention from somebody like Sean!
I celebrated my metamorphosis – and set out to please Sean in any way I could... and Sean, flattered by the attention, didn’t hesitate to let me know exactly what he expected from a woman – and especially from his woman.
“I dislike women who are pale and fat”, he told me.
In response, I spent hours in the sun tanning – and made sure that I stuck to the rabbit-food diet like proverbial glue.
“It’s a women’s job to cook and clean for her man”, Sean told me.
And so I set about becoming the best cook I knew how to be. Although Sean and I weren’t yet married, I would cook his supper in my parents’ kitchen and after he had finished work, he would arrive at my parents’ home and settle himself in front of the TV – whilst I rushed to bring him his pint of beer and a nicely cooked meal, served on a tray. Then I’d pack lunch for him to take to work the following day. It was, Sean had said, my duty to do so.
There was nothing much I wouldn’t have done to prove my commitment and dedication to my rescuer. I was so grateful to Sean – that he hadn’t rejected me, that he loved me and had chosen me instead of other women who had been interested in him. I would have done anything to keep his affections focused on me.
I was proud of the fact that Sean liked to ‘show me off’. It was a new feeling for me. As an awkward, clumsy tomboy, I had never viewed myself as being attractive to men, but after my self-imposed ‘metamorphosis’ – I was rather shocked at all the attention I was suddenly receiving from the opposite sex. The New-Improved-Heather saw me thinner, blonder and more tanned than I had ever been in my life. The new, sexy, Sean-approved wardrobe also seemed to attract a lot of attention… the wrong kind of attention. Wolf whistles and cat-calls were the order of the day. Some men thought nothing of propositioning me in public, staring openly or even being extremely vulgar by licking their lips in a suggestive manner or making obscene gestures with their fingers. Innocent little good Christian me was rather taken aback by all of this sudden male attention. I didn’t quite know what to make of it all. On the one hand, it felt nice to ‘wanted’… on the other hand, it made me feel… dirty.
Sean got a big kick out of the reactions I’d get from other men. He would take me to bars and send me off to buy him a beer whilst he’d watch from a distance as other men flirted and made moves on me. “It’s such a turn-on for me to see other guys coming on to you”, he’d say.
I ignored the uncomfortable feeling I got when he said this. Sean was my Knight. Sean was my rescuer. And I was eternally grateful to him… so if he wanted ‘kicks’ and if he wanted ‘turn-on’s’… I’d oblige him in whatever way necessary - whether I liked it or not.
We got engaged when I was eighteen – and were married the following year when I was nineteen and Sean was twenty-nine. I wore a beautiful, sparkly, white wedding dress – and felt like I was a princess in the midst of a wonderful fairy tale. The handsome Knight in shining armor had finally come to rescue me. Everything was going to be wonderful.
Fast forward to six months after the fairy-tale wedding.
My husband and I were living in a small bachelor flat in the bad part of town. Sean had left his computer business due to issues between his business partner and himself, and he’d managed to find another job at a manufacturing company. I also worked full-time, yet our salaries were meagre – and we barely managed to scrape the cents together to pay the bills.
My average day began when my alarm clock went off at 5:30 am. My first duty was to bring Sean his cup of coffee in bed. He had told me that wives who didn’t bring their husbands coffee in bed were lazy. He had even related a story about one of his friends whose wife kept a flask of coffee next to the bed for convenience sake.
“That is the height of laziness!” Sean had said, “I could never be married to a woman like Sylvia! Imagine being too lazy to get out of bed and make your husband a fresh cup of coffee!”.
I never forgot the conversation – and never forgot to bring my husband a fresh cup of coffee each morning.
After rousing Sean with coffee, I would run a bath for him. And whilst he was in the bath, I would quickly clean the bedroom, make the bed and select his work clothes for the day – which I’d lay out on the bed for him.
When Sean was out the bathroom, it would be my turn to bath, apply make-up and dress. Once finished, my final task was to hand Sean his packed sandwiches – and then we’d both drive to work in one car. Sean would drop me off at work – and collect me later in the afternoon.
In the evenings, when we arrived back home, Sean would settle down in front of the TV with a cigarette and a beer that I had fetched for him. And that’s where he’d stay – while I cooked the supper, washed the dishes, cleaned the flat, ironed clothes and prepared his sandwiches for the following day.
That was my daily routine. I believed it was the right, Christian thing to do – and Sean made sure I never forgot it. On occasion, when I felt tired and overwhelmed, I’d complain to my husband and ask him why it was that he never helped out with household chores.
“You need to understand...”, he said sternly, “that God gave women ‘women’s jobs’ – and God gave men ‘men’s jobs’. Cooking, cleaning and running a home are not men’s jobs”.
“But Sean”, I whined, “I’m also doing a traditional man’s job by working full-time... and yet I still have to do all the women’s jobs without your help”
“I know it may seem unfair, but that’s how it is. If we had enough money, then I’d want you to stop work and focus on the home. But right now, that’s not an option”.
And so the routine continued – and slowly but surely, I began to recognize a terrible ache growing deep inside my heart. The bottom was falling out of my fairy-tale fantasy. I had thought that I’d marry my Knight in Shining Armor and live happily ever after. Instead, I felt trapped in a dungeon of despair – forced to live a life and keep a routine that I’d never planned or anticipated.
“Is this how life is going to be for me forever?”, I wondered. “Is this my destiny? Is this the reason I was created? To simply carve out a hollow existence in suburbia with no dreams, passion or great adventure in sight? Is this all there is to life?”
In time, my father offered to employ Sean as a manager in his plastics factory. He would receive almost double his previous salary and I resigned from my job in order to ‘focus on the home’ just as Sean had promised. We moved into another, larger flat – and I set about being the best wife and homemaker that I knew how to be.
However, things weren’t working out as I had planned. Our new home was in another city – away from family, friends and church. Sean took our car to work every day, so I didn’t have the option of leaving the house. Trapped at home each day, I felt unbearably lonely and began to lapse into a deep depression. Food became my comfort and I started putting on weight. It was something that my husband quickly noticed.
“You’re getting fat”, he said. “You already know how I feel about fat women”.
“I’m sorry Sean... I’ll try harder”
Guilt was beginning to take root in my life. I felt as though I was letting Sean down because I was just so... lonely... so unhappy... and so incredibly bored with my mundane daily routine.
I had been reminded and taught... again and again... that good Christian wives were supposed to want to serve their husbands and look after the home and cook and clean – and eventually raise good, Christian children. But I was frustrated with my routine and my life. Every now and then, I’d allow my mind to wander back to my childhood days – when I lived on the farm as Tomboy Heather. I remembered the feeling of the wind in my hair as I galloped my horse down country roads. I remembered the rotten apricot fights – and the tree-houses and forts that Sonja and I had built. I remembered our treasure hunts, the fufi-slide we had played on for hours, skinny dipping in the large water tank next to the windmill, fishing bloated, dead rats out of the sewer tank and popping them with bricks and then laughing hysterically at how revolting the smell was. Back then, laughter was an every-day occurrence.
“When was the last time I laughed?” I asked myself.
I couldn’t remember.
During that time, Sean began lapsing further and further back into his old ‘wild-boy’ ways. I would have his supper ready by 7pm – which was when he was expected to return home from work. Instead, he would stumble in anytime between 11pm and 3am the following morning... drunk. It soon became habit for him to drive straight from work to the pub. And, unfortunately, one drink was never enough for Sean. He would drink until he either ran out of money – or until the pub closed it’s doors for the evening. Once, after one too many whiskeys, he passed out in one of the booths at his favorite pub – and the manager, not noticing him there, had locked him in for the night. I was frantic with worry and, when I still hadn’t heard from him at 11am the following day, I took his photo to the police station and reported him as missing. Two hours later, he breezed in our front door and told me the ‘funny’ story of how he’d been locked in the pub for the night. Those kinds of incidents seemed to happen on a regular basis – and my complaints were met with an angry, accusing response.
“Why should I come home to an overweight wife in tracksuit pants!?” Sean demanded, “You should be making an effort to look good for me! You should be taking care of me properly! You should be wearing those clothes you used to wear – and those high-heels... suspender belts… and make-up!”
“But Sean... it’s impractical and uncomfortable to clean and cook in those kinds of outfits”
“Well – then you wonder why I don’t come home...! You’ll never know how to please a man!”
Again, the guilt consumed me. I believed that I was failing as a Christian – and that I was failing hopelessly as a wife. Sean confirmed this when he used his ex-fiancé, Wendy, as an example of how I should be behaving.
“Wendy knew how to look after me”, Sean said. “I never had to wait for my supper, she brought me breakfast in bed every day, I never had to wait for my sandwiches... the flat was always perfect...”
“But Sean... I’m not Wendy...”, I said.
“You’re not a WIFE!!!” – he exploded.
I held back the tears and inwardly judged myself. I had failed miserably. I wasn’t a wife... my own husband had even confirmed it! I was fat and un-tanned... I wore tracksuit pants... I didn’t cook nice enough meals... I wasn’t neat enough, organized enough, sexy enough, attentive enough... I had failed my husband and worse, I had failed God Himself by being such a useless wife, such a useless woman, such a useless Christian....
“Why do you have to be so different to other women?” Sean asked me one Saturday afternoon.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Why are you not interested in women’s things?”
“Are you talking about the Tupperware party that your sister invited me to? Sean, you’ve always known that those parties aren’t for me. I have nothing in common with those ladies, as sweet as they are – I’m just not interested in kitchen plastics and tea parties...”
“Well I wish you were interested. Women are supposed to enjoy those kinds of things. After all – it’s stuff for the home. I don’t understand why you have to be so different... so not like a woman....”
And there it was again. A confirmation that I was different. That I was unacceptable the way I was.
“So not like a girl” .
“So not like a woman”.
“You’re not a wife!”
“You’ll never know how to please a man”.
I felt lost and destroyed. “Who am I?” I asked myself again and again. I had tried so hard to morph into the acceptable version of a woman – and of a wife... that I had forgotten who I really was. I had forgotten who God had created me to be. All I knew was that I was living a lie. I was a fake! I wore a permanent mask – and it seemed to fool everybody. Everyone except God – and myself, that is. Everything I did in an attempt to prove myself to others – seemed like a betrayal to my own heart. And I had no idea how to start getting real again. I had no idea how to drop the act and be myself.
The truth is: I hid my true self because I feared the rejection of other people. I was of the opinion that nobody could love and accept creative, adventurous Tomboy Heather. Tomboy Heather was ‘weird’ and ‘different’ and ‘not how a woman is supposed to be’. I believed that I had to become somebody else in order to be accepted and loved. What I never realized was that God loved me – just the way I was… and that my self-imposed ‘metamorphosis’ had actually been a self-imposed act of betrayal
“God!” I prayed, “Please help me to be who You designed me to be – and not who other people want me to be... or even who I think I should be. I don’t want to live this fake life anymore. Please give me the strength to resist the fear of what people might think... and to step in to my true destiny of who I’m supposed to be – and the calling and purposes You have for my life!”
My life didn’t miraculously change immediately after that prayer. Sean continued to drink our finances away and sleep with prostitutes and other women he had met in various pubs.
I had found out about the prostitutes when I had asked him one night whether he’d been unfaithful to me. His silent response confirmed my worst fears.
“Why?”, I asked.
“Well, for a start, they’ll do anything I want them to in bed. And secondly, they’re thin… and you know how much a good body means to me!”
The first time I cut myself was the morning after Sean’s confession of betrayal. We had been given matching champagne glasses for our wedding, and I took the glass which said “Bride” and smashed it in the kitchen sink. I selected a sizeable shard and began sawing at my left arm. I wasn’t trying to commit suicide… I was trying to punish myself. I believed that Sean had a right to blame me for his drunken sexcapades. After all, I had put on weight. I was no longer the skinny, sexy blonde teenager in suspender belts that he had married… so, I deserved ‘punishment’ for failing my husband. The beating and the hair pulling followed shortly thereafter. I would take a wooden baton and repeatedly beat my legs whilst saying: “I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!”. I also pulled out so much hair from the top of my head, that I had a bald patch the size of a peach (which I carefully disguised with clever hairstyles). Hurting myself physically made complete sense at the time.
The years dragged on by. The emotional abuse felt like an avalanche. The criticism never seemed to end. The drinking binges never seemed to stop – and the more Sean drank, the more I ate and self-abused and the more we both spiraled downwards. I had reached the stage where I felt like a robot. I didn’t seem to have any emotions or feelings left at all. I was dead inside.
For a brief moment I felt mildly positive when I fell pregnant. Perhaps, I thought, a child would be the very thing our marriage needed. Perhaps a child would give Sean more of a reason to be at home. The pregnancy ended when I miscarried early in the first trimester… and even then, I felt a failure. “I’m so useless, I can’t even grow a baby!”, I thought.
Life looked up a bit when we moved out of the isolated townhouse and back into our hometown. I was close to family, friends and church once more. And, ever so slowly, I started to build my own life – whether Sean chose to be in it, or not. I got work as a graphic designer for a local newspaper and I walked to work every day. It was wonderful not to feel trapped in the house any more. Friends and family visited me. Other friends collected me on Sundays for church and dropped me home afterwards.
I considered myself to be a ‘married widow’. I seldom saw my husband and when I did, he was almost always drunk. My father continued to employ Sean, in spite of the fact that he showed up late and reeking of stale booze almost every day – and would sleep off his drinking binges in his office – face down on his desk. It infuriated my father. He’d tell me that Sean was ‘a bloody useless little shit’ – and I felt mortified and embarrassed. My father, of course, was keeping Sean in his job for one reason only: concern for me.
By 1996, after 9 years of being together which included 5 years of marriage, my love for Sean had evaporated. All I felt was frustration and contempt… along with a distant inkling of pity. I loathed the stink of his stale whiskey breath. I baulked at his blood-shot eyes, his slurred, incoherent speech and his stumbling, slow movements. His shuffling… the stale cigarette smoke on his clothing. The way booze turned him into a whingeing, tantrum-throwing child. It revolted me (and to this very day, I find it very difficult to stomach a drunk).
And an interesting thing happened; I began to stand up for myself. No longer the passive, whimpering, apologetic doormat – I simply ignored my husband’s rantings and alcohol-induced tantrums and pretended that he wasn’t there. I was, after all, the Master of Pretense.
“Don’t you walk away from me!”, he yelled, as I’d spin on my heel and ignore him when he stumbled in our home inebriated. I had long stopped bringing him his morning coffee… long stopped bothering to prepare suppers (which would inevitably end up hard and inedible in the warming drawer). My bed was shared with my two cats. Sean’s bed was the couch in the lounge. We seldom spoke.
One of my last breakdowns had been months prior, when I had collapsed in heap of snot and tears on the dining room floor and had wailed and pleaded with him to stop drinking.
“You’re an alcoholic – can’t you see?”, I had bawled, “Please, please… for the sake of our marriage… the sake of my sanity… please get some help!”.
“You don’t dare call me an alcoholic!”, he had retaliated angrily, “You can call me an alcoholic when I pour whiskey on my breakfast cereal! I am NOT an alcoholic! I choose to drink – and I could choose not to drink… if I wanted to”.
The day finally came when I wrote Sean a letter of ultimatum. “It’s me and our marriage… or the booze and the women. Choose now”. I wrote.
The following day, he was back in his local pub and I packed some clothes and moved in with my mother. A few days later, I returned home to collect a few more personal belongings. I walked, unannounced, into our bedroom to find Sean in our bed… and a naked blonde cowering behind our bedroom door. It was simply the seal of finality that I needed to recognize that my marriage was, indeed, over.
Thankfully, I had some really fantastic, supportive friends who came to my rescue. I had joined a band (as keyboardist) during the final, darkest months of my marriage. The band was called ‘Desert Rain’ – we performed contemporary Christian rock music (yes, there is such a thing) at churches, seminars, festivals, camps, outreaches and the like. At a time when it was really easy for me to be very cynical about men in general, I was fortunate enough to have men (all of them musicians) as my closest and most trusted friends. They were my support, my shoulder to cry on. They never took advantage of me. Two of the men, Dino and his brother Nick, had a large, warm family who welcomed me as one of their own. It was such a liberating, wonderful time for me!
Sean and I were officially divorced shortly thereafter (in May 1997).
A lot happened in the years following, most notably incredible healing of my rejection issues and some of self-hatred issues that had been dragging me down for years. I haven’t entertained the idea of slicing my arms or beating my legs – for many years now.
Since those dark days, I can honestly say that my life has been beautifully transformed. I had the opportunity to travel extensively, experience many wonderful and exciting things and I’ve met many wonderful, beautiful friends over the years.
The best part though was marrying Nick – (the bass player from Desert Rain). We got married in February 2005 – a bit more than 10 years after the first time we met in November 1996. For most of those years, we were very close, very platonic friends – how we got together is another miracle in itself (if you’re interested - you can read that story by clicking on our wedding photo to the right of this paragraph).
There was a bit of ugliness when Nick and I first got together – when certain members of his family (mostly of the female variety) – decided that I was completely wrong for Nick. To them, it made no sense. I wasn’t thin enough, young enough, neat enough, responsible enough, Greek enough, virgin enough, domestic enough… I just wasn’t “enough” – I wasn’t “right”… in fact, in their opinion at the time, I was horribly “wrong”!
Again – I felt that same, old, familiar pressure to concede to other people’s expectations of what I should be, how I should dress, what I should weigh, how I should behave, what I should act like in order to earn some acceptance – but this time, I was having none of it… and neither was Nick!
“When is the family going to understand that I LOVE HEATHER JUST THE WAY SHE IS… I don’t WANT her to change!” – he shouted (loudly), at a well-meaning relative who had just presented me with a long, condescending list of things I needed to change about myself in order to be “accepted” by the family.
And there it was… for the first time… those beautiful, beautiful words I had been longing to hear for my whole life: “I love Heather just the way she is. I don’t want her to change”.
At the risk of sounding like a sickly-sweet gloater… I have to honestly say that I am so very, very happily married to my Nick. He has seen me at my best… he’s seen me at my worst. He’s loved me and supported me through fat and thin… without criticism! He encourages me, he fights for me, he believes in me… he tells me (regularly) that I’m beautiful - and today, our little family is complete with the addition of two beautiful children. I am unbelievably blessed... and grateful.
I have come a long way (with regards to my personal struggles). I believe that God has graciously healed me of many deep, internal issues. I no longer hate myself, despise myself or blame myself for every bad thing that happens in life. I no longer cut myself, beat myself or pluck out the hair from my head…
I also believe that beauty is an awesome, special God-purposed-and-designed thing - and I believe that every woman is beautiful in her own, unique way... every woman - including me (and it has taken me a long time to be able to confidently write those words).
Have I ‘arrived’? Hell, no! I still struggle with all sorts of issues and insecurities... but I’m so much better than what I was! I have come such a long way - and I’m proud of my progress thus far. I think I’m beginning to appreciate and understand why the journey IS more important than the destination... and so, instead of impatiently trying to fast-forward myself to the finish line - I’m taking my time, and enjoying the ride.
I’m especially enjoying the company of other sojourners who are on a similar route to mine. I want to connect with and encourage others... but I also want to learn from my fellow comrades at the same time (and that’s a large part of why I launched Beautiful Life Project... and this website).
Perhaps this whole story could be best summed up in a song that I wrote recently - it goes like this:
There once was a time when I wished I could change in an instant I once used to dream of a magical, miracle cure My problems should vanish, my battles be won sans the bleeding, destruction, the devastation the rivers of tears, the anguish... the fears... in a fight that just seemed to go on and on...
I once used to pray that God would take pity and heal me With a wave of His hand, He should swiftly delivery my dream My life would be perfect, my destiny sure sans the struggle, the strife that I had to endure The dreams and the schemes, the crazy extremes of a lifetime in search of a magical cure...
But I’m still walking down this road with blisters on my soles... with sweat that stains my brow... with brave, courageous goals... I’m still walking down this road... With comrades by my side... We share each others’ load... We’re fighting for our lives.
* Not his real name.
Important to Note: Telling my story openly was a difficult choice for me to make. I haven’t written the nicest things about my ex-husband... and I often wonder whether it’s fair of me to broadcast that ugly part of my history on the internet for all to see and read (even though I’ve changed his name and kept his identity private). I often wonder what he’d think and/or how angry and indignant he’d be if he ever came across this site and read my account of our marriage. I guess that, in some annoying way, I still care what he - and his family - think about me.
Of course, there are always two sides to every story. My own account is mentioned here, and this is my honest recollection. My nearest and dearest could easily vouch for that. Perhaps my ex has his own version of events - and I guess he’d also be free to publish his version on a website of his own.
For a while I wondered whether I should simply exclude my story entirely from this site. History is - after all history... and we’ve all long since moved on with our lives. My ex-husband lives in another country now. He has two children - and I can very honestly say that I hold no bitter or angry feelings towards him... in fact, I very seldom even think about him these days.
Shouldn’t I just ‘let sleeping dogs lie’? Shouldn’t I forget my past and move on towards my future?
When I originally started writing this story, I grappled with those questions for a while - but I still come to the same conclusion: my story is a real piece of my “testimony”... a piece of “me”. It’s far easier to understand me... my heart... my insecurities... my strengths... my weaknesses... my passions... if you understand where I come from. Secondly, I really hoped that my story would resonate with other women. Many have walked similar paths - and could, perhaps find some comfort in the fact that they’re not alone on their journey.
So, with apologies in advance to my ex-husband, I choose to share my history with women everywhere - with the hope that it would encourage and inspire others to ‘hang in there’... because there always is a light at the end of the tunnel and the opportunity for even the ugliest of sorrows to be redeemed in the long run.
Update: April 2011
My ex-husband contacted me out of the blue the other day (via Facebook). He wrote me a letter and he sincerely apologised for all of the hurt that he had caused during the time we were together.
Reading that letter... healed... something deep inside of me and provided me with a deep sense of closure. His apology was gratefully received and accepted - and I think it was really big of him to humble himself in that way after all these years.
I guess we all grow up and change. The ex-husband included. He is no longer the person he was - and neither am I. I’m sure he’d make a much better husband now that he’s older and wiser... although, he’s still single.
With all my heart, I wish him all of the best.

The days when I was still true to myself... I loved wearing hats, costume jewelry and clothes from flea markets... all of that changed when Sean came into my life.

I was dating Sean when this photo was taken. I wore a ring of his on a chain around my neck - to always be reminded of him. When he saw this photo for the first time, he told me that I should lose more weight because my legs were still a bit fat.

On holiday during the first year of marriage. The bottom was falling out of my fairy-tale fantasies...

This photo was taken during a very difficult time in my life... but without fail, I kept on the fake “I’m happy” mask...
At the time this photo was taken, I believed that I was VERY fat and VERY unattractive...

With Nick, I am 100% comfortable with simply being “me”. I can be as creative, wild, adventurous, musical, scatty and unpredictable as I please - without any fear of condemnation... it’s such a liberating feeling after all those years of trying to be someone I’m not...

Me (on right) with my best friend, Tracy. I was fifteen at the time, and I honestly believed that I was double Tracy’s size. I even used to refer to ourselves as “Laurel and Hardy” - because I believed that I was so much fatter than her!

Sean was extremely unhappy at the state of my body when this photo was taken...

Desert Rain

Click on our wedding pic to read more about our beautiful LOVE STORY!

Heather’s Story...