Ever been betrayed by someone?  Cuts deep right?

I am not talking about just your average gutless power-hungry coworker that steals an idea, or some friend that always has to one up you on things.

I am talking betrayal to the core of humanity…….to the Soul and edge of sanity….

Betrayal that tests the limits of who one is, what we believe in, how we feel towards all others, drains our physical, emotional, spiritual energy and our passion and zest for life.  Betrayal that others who have not experienced it don’t even know how to relate to other people on.

At my age, I have been around the block enough in life, that sadly, you just have to expect the back stabbers, bully bosses, power-hungry, self-centered people of life hiding behind the dark, waiting in the shadows to unleash their madness.

When not too overloaded at once with any one situation, we have resilience to deal with and handle best we can. But later in life, after losing my wife of 29 years, I was hit with an Atom Bomb of hate, lies, betrayal, two faced, totally unsympathetic family members that only saw me for money and revenge in their sad unfortunate lives.

This purpose of this reflection is not to identify who these people are, or to review all the nasty details.

The purpose is to somehow reflect on this all in a way that might help someone else.  Because I felt alone on an island in dealing with it all and there was NO light at the end of the tunnel, there was NO rescue ship on the horizon, there was NO Angel appearing to me with special messages.  In many cases, there is no textbook answer, each person experiencing must find their own path out of.

All I had was sleepless nights, stress, lots of free advice I did not need, people that could not comprehend what I was going through and they could only see things in their small little box of the world. I am not painting a broad brush of people being mean spirited or useless, but there is only so many words and ways to describe how such a loss in life changes everything, and you can’t possible fully know unless you had to face it or another similar type of loss.

I had to rediscover who I was, find somewhere deep inside new strength, think about the reasons for forgiveness and forgetting and letting go (which I went through a cycle of, it was not a once and done purging), to try and find a path to deal with the madness I had to cope with.

I am a detailed type of person…….I wanted to have ALL the answers in life…….. and I looked at a blank page with NOTHING!  I felt useless, for years encouraging and helping others and now I couldn’t even find a few words to pick myself out of the gutter of despair.  To be clear, I never thought about hurting myself (suicide)…….that internal discussion was held with myself when I first was diagnosed with sleep apnea earlier in life.   I have Faith deep inside that even if I was on the street homeless, God still has plan for me, and I would never quit on God. 

Life is not easy.  It is stressful.  The pace of life with technology makes life even harder to keep in balance.  MOST people have thoughts of suicide at some point in their life.  Not all will act on that, but it is part of life with our complex minds to have these thoughts. I will say that again, MANY have these thoughts at times.  Some it may be a quick passing thought, some may dwell on it more, but most will never act on these thoughts.  Suicide is a complex mental health issue still not fully understood.  Further, any dependency issues/addictions, may impair judgment even more.

The storm and betrayal in my life went through some periods where it was calm and only a small  amount of stress for months at a time in some periods as we made some progress.  But there were also big moments of big steps backwards and months of progress unraveled by sometimes one short email or conversation.

All the while trying to settle death benefits that took much longer due to Covid, supporting my daughters through the worst imaginable loss of their lives, feeling lost with no direction and lonely myself just from normal events of life, and now add in the pandemic issues, the family issues that no one could have ever imagined.  People turning on me from all directions.

I got tired of hearing, just walk away from the problem, I stopped talking to some family and friends.  I was becoming more and more isolated and less social.

After about six months of this insanity from so called family…..I began to stop feeling sorry for myself, started to let go of some the hate I had, which the others obviously felt for me also or we would never have such a legal and family mess.  I began to realize this trial was changing who I was, wanted to be, and how I interacted with others, and all not in a good way.

I realized I will never change the heartlessness of these people and I had to find a new perspective  and outlook on all this.  It didn’t happen overnight.

Finding the strength to deal with my nightmare happened slowly.  The goal of this post is to let people know they are not alone if going through something similar. I am still writing the next part of this and how I found the strength to keep going and cope with all this. 

GOD BLESS AND PEACE TO ALL!!