Divorce, Drinking and Dating

by Danielle Prahl

  I tried to explain to her that ever since this situation had happened, I felt this pull deep within my soul to help women. I wanted to help women stand in their strengths, to understand that they could be, do, and have anything that they wanted and desired in their lives. That their life could literally be by their own design and that they were capable of anything. The societal norms and the regulations people put on us from the outside, or only by our own admission, weren’t real. I wanted moms to know that they could travel and have the businesses that they wanted, that single women were allowed to feel worthy, that every woman should own her own piece of the world, and to stop letting others put us in a corner and influence us into taking a back seat. We may be great backseat drivers, but ultimately this is not where we belong. I had always known I was worth something and was supposed to do something of great importance with my life, and I felt a true calling from outside and from within; I just had no idea how to actually do it.

  She said, “I believe in soul contracts. I believe that each of us signs one when we come to this earth. Perhaps your ex’s soul contract was to make sure that you step into your power to impact and change hundreds of thousands of women’s lives. Sure, it sucks, and I can certainly understand being mad at him, but his soul contract required him to be in these very unpleasant situations to catapult you into who you could be. He had to go to prison. You get to change lives. At the end of the day, you win. He was only a conduit to your betterment.”

  I was still pissed off at him and the situation, and it sickens me to my very core, his ability to deceive me and to leave me in the state that he did, to think of all of the people he hurt and the lives he destroyed. I was only one of the people in his long, hurricane path of destruction. Yet, looking at this from her standpoint actually made sense. Had none of this ever happened, I don’t think that I ever would have had to become this person. I lived out loud and passionately before and did things on my own terms, but was very much roped into building things at the time for my spouse. He didn’t allow my full light to shine the way that it needed to. He was threatened by my power. Now I had nothing to hold me back, and I would have to become the person I needed to be, to do the work I was called here to do. Sure, it may sound insane, but it’s the honest truth. Shit be cray up in here.

  And then I had another call that impacted my life. A prospective client wanted to hire me to help her launch her program, get her tech set up, and help to manage such an undertaking. She explained that she was a certified High Performance coach, which I didn’t know much about at the time, but basically it meant that she was part of an exclusive program with Brendan Burchard on techniques to stay in high performance. I guess only a relatively small amount people in the entire world are certified as High Performance coaches, and she wanted us to get on a call as if I was a client, so that I could understand her business and what the people in her future course would go through.

  She asked me a series of questions about my day, what my work was like, what my life was like. I knew I had shitty boundaries and was a “yes” person. I did not used to be this way whatsoever. I was almost ruthless before about standing up for myself and saying what I wanted and needed in almost any moment. Something about the shit box I received through that situation had really diminished that for me. I didn’t trust myself or my judgment, and when you come from that place, it’s hard to enforce pretty much anything concerning yourself. I was basically a skeleton who made it through the day with my emotions living in a box somewhere. I had become a workhorse with little more than tasks to be completed each day, from the moment I woke up until the moment I went to bed, and this included my personal relationships. It was as if everyone wanted what I could offer to them. After hearing about my usual daily life and my relationships, she said, “It sounds to me as if you give a whole lot of yourself. If you give and give and give and do and give and do, who is it that gives and does for you? What fills you up?”

  I couldn’t answer her. That sounds horrible, but I really couldn’t think of anyone on a regular basis who regularly did much of anything for me. That’s not to say that I don’t have some amazing friends and family, who have gone out of their way to do whatever they could, but on a consistent basis in the way that she meant, I couldn’t think of a single person. “You know,” she continued after many moments of me not saying anything, “you are not an ATM. You can’t just put out unlimited resources all the time without replenishing yourself somehow. You need someone to make deposits. They can’t all be withdrawals.”

  Well, holy shit. You know the country song (I am not a huge country fan but it’s fitting for my extended sob story) “Why Didn’t I Think of That?” Really, I had never thought of that. With all of this newfound information, I had an idea of what I wanted to do, where I was headed, and how I wanted my life to look. This was all well and good. You can read six million self-help books and do the meditations and the journals and burn enough sage to asphyxiate yourself, and somehow still not know how the hell to actually do the things. I knew what I wanted to do and be; how to actually get there was the friggin’ problem. So, I just kept putting one foot in front of the other.

  Chapter 20:

  Opening the Flood Gates at My Best Friend’s Fucked Up Wedding

  Remember earlier when I mentioned I had a hard time accessing my emotions? All of that changed at quite possibly the most inopportune moment ever. I guess we will have to start with the bachelorette trip for a friend from high school, who had asked me to be a bridesmaid in her wedding. I really debated writing about this at all, to be honest, because the events are embarrassing to talk about now, but this wedding was a catalyst moment that I have to include to tell my full story, against my better judgment.

  Full disclosure, I am not saying she is bad or wrong, and I am not in any way diminishing her as a person, but we had been on different paths since high school graduation. Sometimes, you just don’t end up being forever friends, and that’s okay. This individual had said some really horrible things about me over the years, and as time went on it became more apparent that she just wasn’t there to support and love me as a human. One of the greatest things I had learned about being an adult, is that we are allowed to decide who is in our innermost circle and who needs to be moved into the outer rings. She was someone I had moved into some outer rings some time ago. We lived in different states and had completely different lives. Although we stayed mildly in touch, we weren’t close and hadn’t been close for over a decade.

  When she asked me to be a bridesmaid in her upcoming wedding, I was truly surprised, but I agreed because we had so much history together, and I felt that it was the right thing to do. For her bachelorette party, we were all to meet in Vegas and share a large suite. Sir ended up traveling there around the same time for some work stuff, so I thought it would be okay to go. I could hang with the girls, get some time with him, and then head back. Of course, I planned to stay in his room; I had long outgrown the sleeping-in-a-bed-with-three-other-people thing, without my own space and privacy after a night out on the town in Vegas. I could tell they were slightly annoyed that he was there, but they invited him out with us the first night when I introduced him. I didn’t expect him to go, but they asked and he said sure.

  I had gone to school with a lot of people in the group, but I hadn’t lived in the small town I grew up in for over 10 years and our lives were worlds apart. I had a hard time really understanding them and their mindsets. They lived in small towns where you go directly to college, get a degree, get a 9 to 5 job and a 401k, and the dentist is the richest person you know. You snag a boyfriend and get married and then go on to work 40 years with vacations when you’re allowed. We were just different people, nothing more and nothing less, but it could be awkward at times. I was very much an outsider in this situation.

  The rest of the trip, the girls went out to clubs and pool parties, and I went along with them but they spent most of the time not as a group of girls, but chatting with strangers and doing thi
s and that. I found myself alone a lot of the time, so I’d go off to hang out with my boyfriend because it’s not as if they were going to notice. This wasn’t a girl’s kumbaya spa day, since they were all kind of doing their own thing, talking to guys, and scampering around here and there. Plus, I’m a grown-ass woman who paid to be there, so I didn’t feel bad doing what I wanted to do. I worked constantly, and with the little time I was taking off, I was determined to enjoy it.

  On the second to last day, Sir and I went to a pool party with the girls, and I had a bunch of their chewing tobacco in my purse. It kept getting confiscated, so we started sneaking it in under our bikini tops. We got to the security bag check, and, I must admit that for the last 10 years or so, I have been a major psycho when it comes to nutrition and supplements. I love them. I am interested in them. And being that it had been a bit of time for me since I had been to the Vegas party all night world, I was not about to be drinking a whole lot without some major B12 and vitamin rejuvenation.

  At the security line, the man was questioning some things in my purse. I know how suspicious it looked, and I don’t blame them for wanting to look into it further. B12 powder mix just doesn’t look good spilled all over your purse, especially in Vegas. As they took me away from my group of friends to investigate, the girls all headed inside. After they realized that all I had was a harmless instant mix for electrolytes, they let me go back to the entrance line, but at this point, the line was wrapped around the block. I really didn’t even want to go watch them talk to a bunch of strangers all day, and didn’t know why I was wasting my time here. I called the bride-to-be and said that the line was crazy and I wasn’t sure they’d let me back in. She said, “Do you mind going and hanging out with your boyfriend because we are having fun and I don’t want to leave?”

  Uh, okay. Obviously, we weren’t communicating well, but as it didn’t sound like they gave a shit if I was there or not, I didn’t really want to stand in that long line and deal with trying to find them, sober as a gopher while they were probably three shots deep by now at some random’s cabana. Off the hook, I enjoyed the rest of our trip, went to the girls’ dinner, and spent the rest of the time with my boyfriend. Upon leaving, the bride-to-be texted me asking me to pay my portion of the hotel room that I had been in for maybe an hour the whole weekend. I Venmoed the money and went back home to my life.

  With the wedding approaching, I knew it would not be without some difficulty. I had been working 14 hour days with literally no days off since I had gotten back from Vegas. I was drained and exhausted in every sense of the word. This ATM machine was just giving wherever it could and not receiving much in return. The bride-to-be’s sister would be styling hair for the wedding and asked if I wouldn’t mind pitching in. There were five of us total, and I knew how much of an ordeal this can be, so I said I’d be happy to help (this was all prior to the bachelorette party of course). As I didn’t even really know these people anymore and they certainly didn’t know me, I thought at least I will have a function during the day besides sitting there awkwardly with nobody to talk to. Sir couldn’t make it to the wedding with me, so I got to be the cool person who brought their mom as the date to the wedding (although she really is the most fun date ever, so I was excited anyway). It was just lightyears away from what my life looked like in the recent past as a married person with someone by my side, who (I thought) I could always rely upon to be there for me.

  The day of the wedding, I showed up and helped with styling hair as we had planned, but feeling very sleep-deprived. We started having some drinks at an early hour, and between that and not having much to eat, it was really a disaster waiting to happen for me. But hey, everything happens for a reason. The ceremony was beautiful and the reception was gorgeously decorated, and even though there were some striking similarities to obvious choices I had made at my own wedding two years prior, I pushed that into the back of my mind and just tried to be present in this moment for her.

  Some of the other bridesmaids basically accused one of our good friends of doing drugs at the wedding (even though he was sitting with my mom, you know, the sheriff). They tried to start some drama, but it just didn’t work. I thought how ridiculous it was and avoided them the rest of the evening. It was a gorgeous event and just when the father-daughter dance came on with a slideshow showing the years of the couple together, so much flooded into my heart and mind about my own relationship, my own father, my own destroyed marriage and life, and, at the same time, overwhelming happiness for her in this moment. My heart was filled to the brim and with tears in my eyes, I said a silent prayer that she would never have to go through what I went through.

  I kept running into people from high school, and, at this point, I was really on my last leg. Exhausted and having had too many shots bought for me by old friends, I was starting to crash hard. My stepdad came to pick my mom and me up, and my parents said, alright, I think it’s time we get you out of here, which means I must have really started to cross into the hot mess zone. I loaded up into the car while my mom went to the “get ready” room (where the bride and all of us had prepared for the big day) and apparently got my suitcase that I had brought with all of my personal possessions in it, unbeknownst to me. We started to head home and suddenly, all of the hurt and pain and anger that I had not felt from my own situation broke free and hit me like rush hour traffic on the 405 freeway. I have never in my entire life cried so much or so hard or been so hysterical. I cried for myself and 32 other people at once. I could barely hear what I sounded like because my ears were so full of sadness, but what I could make out didn’t sound human. It sounded like pure pain coming out of every orifice of my body. It broke out of me in every direction imaginable. I was an absolute wreck.

  Now, I could blame it on the many, many drinks we had that day, the constant work and exhaustion, the old wounds of being in my hometown, around my parents and high school friends, or even being at a wedding, but the truth was that something had unleashed all the grief I had been completely unable to access for so long. And up it came. My parents had to practically carry me from the car to our house, and as tears spilled all over my bridesmaid dress, my mom helped me change into an oversized t-shirt. They made sure I was going to survive, and I cannot imagine what they were thinking (poor souls). I was a complete wreck.

  Suddenly, my phone rang. It was the bride’s sister, so I answered in case it was important. She had had her fair share of drinks too and started going off on me about how my mom had stolen her hair supplies. It made no sense to me. I was in the middle of an emotional and mental breakdown, and she is calling and saying my mom of all people stole her hair stuff? My mom doesn’t even like to do her own hair, for Christ’s sake. I said, “I have no idea what you are talking about,” probably in much ruder terms than that, but it caught me off guard and I was not in a state to be approached about anything concerning my family that way.

  My mom came in to check on me and I told her what had just happened, saying, “How weird is that for her to accuse you of stealing her stuff? Like WTF?” My mom pointed to a black suitcase in the corner that I had not seen before this moment. “Is that your suitcase?” She half grinned.

  “Uh, no” I replied. “Oops,” my mom said. Basically, my parents hadn’t really seen much of the luggage I had brought home with me from the airport besides that it was dark colored and somewhat large. I guess my mom had tried to be nice and grab my bag for me (I thought I’d just get it the next day when we went to pick up her car), but had mistaken the bride’s sister’s bag for mine since it had a bunch of curling irons and things in it. It all made sense now, except the accusatory rudeness. My bag had all my clothes for my trip in it, everything that I had brought with me, jewelry, expensive shoes, and important paperwork for work that I needed. I wasn’t calling them throwing a fit. I got a notification that her mom had reached out on Facebook to message me asking if they could get the suitcase back.

  “No,” I thought to myself, “I want to keep your
hair kit and surrender all my personal belongings in return.” What was the deal with these people? I was not happy to be treated this way. I messaged her back that all my belongings were still in the room and I obviously wanted those as well, so my mom would be happy to swap suitcases in the morning or drop it wherever, when she went to get her car at the venue. Not a big deal.

  Then the bride texted me, “If you ever talk to my sister like that again, you and I are going to have problems. Also, my husband is mad that you were caught doing drugs at our wedding.” I literally laughed out loud when I read that part. After all of these years and all of the times that she had put me down, belittled me, talked bad about my accomplishments or who I was as a person, this was really the last straw.

  I realized in this moment that this was not the type of person I needed in my life anymore. I was feeling so much hurt and pain, that in comparison I realized they would never understand the depth of what true deception and destruction felt like. They would cling to the petty drama and nuances that they could muster up because of their lack of tragedy and compassion, and understanding about how much hurt and pain can happen in the world, and what is truly important.

  I wasn’t sure if she meant to actually accuse me of “doing drugs” at her bachelorette party and just said it wrong (which would at least make sense), or if she actually meant to accuse me of doing drugs at her wedding, but either way the fact that she knew so little about me that she could accuse me of any such thing, spoke all the volumes I needed to hear. There was no “thank you for traveling and being there for me and helping with hair and whatever was needed.” Nothing. Just accusatory remarks. I said, “Don’t ever fucking talk to me again.” And that was that. I removed her from my life in this moment. I blocked her and those girls on her drug-sniffing panel from my phone and social media.