Beautiful Lies: The Power of a Great Imagination

I've always had a vivid imagination and a deep love of movies. As a kid, I could entertain myself for hours with whatever happened to be around and an idea of what it could become.

That's just how my brain worked. Still does. And I learned young how useful it could be.

My mother's first husband taught me early on that home wasn't always safe. I couldn't control anything that was happening, but I could control how I responded to it.

I got very good at it.

I memorized lines, rehearsed dance routines in our grimy garage, and lip-synced power ballads into my yellow and white Ambassador curling iron (anyone remember those?).

I was pretending to be more talented, confident, and interesting than the kid I thought I was.

At fourteen, I earned a spot in our state's top performing arts school. It was competitive, intense, and full of talent and drama. I loved every second of it.

I was told I had real chops, maybe enough to make it.

But after graduation, while my classmates headed off to LA, Juilliard, or some obscure theatre program in Europe, I stayed home. I let fear talk me out of the risk and called it being realistic.

I pursued, and achieved, steady work and a sense of stability. But I’d be lying if I said I never wondered what would’ve happened if I’d risked it all back then.

Instead, I got married.

I regret everything about that except the daughter it gave me.

I was 22 and didn't know the difference between a manchild and a man. He was losing his sight when we met, and I took that on as my identity- the woman who stood beside her husband, no matter what.

Which is a good thing in a healthy marriage. Which...wasn't the case with us.

I liked being the one who could handle everything. From his moods, his appointments, our daughter, our house, our jobs, and everything in between, I took it on with a sense of pride.

Whatever came up, I dealt with it. It made me feel important, and I needed to be needed.

Which worked out beautifully since he wanted someone to take care of him.

For nearly a decade, we were a perfect match in all the wrong ways.

But the problem was I wasn't imagining what was next anymore. I was waiting, waiting for the life I thought all that patience and loyalty was supposed to 'reward' me with.

You ever wish you could go back in time and just smack the stupid right out of your young, ignorant self? I do.

On a random summer day, I was driving in traffic, a thousand things on my mind, and my phone buzzing with another "just checking in" call. God forbid I have five whole minutes to myself.

And all of a sudden, ithit me: this is it.
This is my life.

Nothing was going to change. The arguments, the loneliness, and the nonstop grind of taking care of everything would all look the same for me at fifty as they did at 30 unless I did something about it.

A few weeks later, at a business lunch, someone asked, "So, tell me about yourself."

I sat there, stumped.

I couldn't think of anything interesting to say.

I had no identity that didn’t involve taking care of someone else. I wasn’t a happy wife. I didn’t even feel like a whole person.

I was a utility.

That's when I decided, come hell or high water, I was leaving.

I already knew from past experience what would happen next. The threats to kill himself if I ever left. The promises to be better (despite refusing my pleas for couples therapy).

Lies. All lies.

At home, I detached. I deliberately stopped reacting and trying to make him understand me; I didn't care anymore if he did.

He noticed immediately and accused me of not loving him anymore.

I mean, he wasn't wrong. By then, all I felt was resentment, and guilt for being resentful.

"I don’t want to be in this marriage anymore," I told him, my voice flat.

I couldn't even muster the effort to sound sad about it. I'd spent over a decade ignoring red flags and feeling guilty for wanting out of a marriage to a 'helpless' blind man.

Once again, he cried and promised things would change. And once again, he threatened to kill himself if I left.

But I left anyway.

Don't worry, he's still very much alive.
Probably still waiting on that Oscar.

After we separated, his family left me voicemails calling me selfish and yelling about who was going to take care of him now.

It took less than a week for them to feel the strain of what I'd managed for ten years.

I thought the divorce would be the end of it, but it wasn't, at first. Codependency is a bitch to get over, after all. It took time, and boundaries I had to actually enforce before I stopped needing his validation and started focusing on my own life.

I didn’t even know what I liked anymore, so I tried new things, even things that felt ridiculous and I completely sucked at.

I didn't care; I felt so far behind that I was in this mad rush to catch up to some invisible waterline of progress.

And I began picturing what I wanted out of life before I even knew how I'd ever get it.

I've done that with everything from writing and work to running, traveling, even my home. I get an idea and spend way too much time envisioning it and figuring out how to make it happen.

Will all of it happen? Probably not - but I've been very wrong about possibilities before.

Some beautiful lies are worth believing in.

Heather Papovich is the voice behind Unfinished Business. She's seen some things. She'll tell you about them.