Do you ever find yourself in a moment where you stop, dead in your tracks?  Like a dog who’s on a mission until it suddenly stops to scratch behind its ears.  Have you ever been compelled to stop in the middle of your life and pinch yourself?  I do.  More often than probably most others.  As if I’m consciously waking myself up from an 18-year-long hallucination.

I do.

A lot.

Not a terrible, fear-inducing hallucination.  Quite the opposite of that.  It feels like I’m wandering through this surreal illusion of complete happiness.  Contentment.  Safety.  Comfort.  Love.  Unbridled joy.  When all I feel that I deserve is what I had before this.  Before my second marriage.  Fear.  Violence.  Pain.  Uncertainty.  Aloneness.  The chaotic frenzy thrust upon me by my ex-husband.

Logically I’m aware that no one should ever have to live the life I lived before I got divorced.  Before I remarried.  Before I met my Mr. Wonderful (I’m not kidding).  Yet the past echoes inside, pushing its way into my thoughts until it invades my personal paradise, and shakes the center of my world.

I wonder about that.

Why?

Perhaps my soul has been scarred.  Maimed so profoundly that these moments of sheer trust and safety ignite in me a survival instinct; however twisted it may be.  That my day-to-day contentment is a vestige of potential chaos to come.  A silver lining that hides an unseen darkness which will poison the horizon of my life.

Perhaps.

I’d like to believe that my experiences carried by those scars are a simple reminder to be thankful for the life I have now.  For the love.  For the companionship.  For the safety.  For the devotion and kindness given to me by my husband, children, and family.  A simple reminder to be grateful for this fantastic life that I have now.

Maybe I should just stop pinching myself, and enjoy the truth of the love around me.

Allow that wound inside of me to heal.

Maybe.