Your New Life Will Cost You Your Old One
From the outside, my life looked good.
Marriage. Baby. Community. Stability.
But inside, I felt stuck.
Like I was living in a body and a life I hadn’t exactly chosen, but had somehow accepted.
It was familiar—
(and that was the scariest part).
I kept wondering: Is this really it? Is this all my life is meant to be?
The Realization I Couldn’t Unsee
After my son was born, the questions I had buried for decades started to rise.
What if I wasn’t straight?
(What if this ache inside me was trying to tell the truth?)
At first I didn’t want to name it.
Am I a lesbian? Bisexual? What does this mean for my life? For my family? For me?
But my body already knew.
(It had known all along.)
I was bisexual—
living in a marriage where intimacy was absent,
where my desire had no place to breathe.
I remember sex feeling like two blind people trying to teach each other how to read.
Awkward. Unsafe. Heavy with shame.
And always, the message underneath: you are unwanted.
That truth sat like a stone on my chest.
I couldn’t unsee it.
The Grief of Leaving
Ending the marriage was brutal.
Everyone thought we had a “good life.”
And I kept asking myself:
Am I really ending my marriage for sex?
(Or is it for something I can’t yet name—something deeper than sex, something about being fully alive?)
Because it wasn’t just about sex.
It was about permission.
It was about finally choosing my own life—something I had never done before.
When I asked for an open marriage, it became clear: he hadn’t signed up for that.
And I knew—if I stayed, I would never get to know myself.
So I left.
The grief was suffocating.
I lost my community almost overnight.
People whispered that I was wrong, that my sexuality was wrong.
For months, I lived in shock—
suspended between the life I left and a life I couldn’t yet see.
It felt like betrayal.
It felt like exile.
And still, I knew I couldn’t go back.
The First Flicker of Freedom
Then came a moment I’ll never forget.
I was standing in a grocery store parking lot in Nederland, Colorado.
I didn’t even go inside. I just stood there, breathing.
And it hit me:
I can go wherever I want.
No one will stop me.
No one will shame me.
No one can take this away.
The tears came.
For the first time in my life, I felt the weight lift.
I wasn’t under anyone’s authority—
not my father’s, not my husband’s.
I was under my own.
It was small. Ordinary.
And it was everything.
What Freedom Means Now
At first, freedom looked like saying yes to everything I’d once been denied.
Exploring. Trying. Tasting. Breathing.
Now, freedom feels quieter.
It’s listening to my body.
(It whispers before my mind shouts).
It’s choosing peace over chaos.
It’s saying yes to a life I am actively building—
not one handed to me.
Freedom isn’t reckless.
It’s responsible.
It’s love.
And it’s mine.
If You’re Standing on the Edge
You may not share my story.
But if you feel trapped in a life you didn’t choose, I want you to know this:
It’s not about blowing up your marriage or your world.
(It’s not about chasing chaos for its own sake).
It’s about finally choosing your own life.
On the other side of the grief and fear is something worth everything—
a life that feels like yours.
