10 Years a Divorcee – In the End

My anniversary was this year. The ten-year mark after my divorce. Someone asked me today if I am celebrating the date. I said yes, but then another friend remarked that I celebrated every day, which was also true. It got me thinking though, about what I’m celebrating in the end and just exactly where my mind and emotions are about being a divorcee.

The way it began

The year I got divorced I was angry. In shock and overwhelmed. I made it through on sheer will and the determination to get away. There was no alternative and failure was not an option. I have a lot of regrets. I regretted not having more time to go through all the possessions I had chosen to bring with me to my new life. I had to make too many decisions too quickly and under duress.

My fallback decision was “I’ll deal with it later” and in the case of some things, later hasn’t come, and I am still carrying the many layers of baggage that I carted 1400+ miles.

One regret

I regretted not fighting harder for my stepson. It’s like I punished him for being related to his father and for not being more loyal to me. I know the last time I spoke with him, that conversation will stay with me for a long time. Because I really did want to keep him. I loved him like he was my own, and I knew he was truly an older brother to my two sons.

Would he have come with me? If I had taken him, would his father have fought me for him? Could I have legally taken him? I don’t know. Considering he passed away not 4 years later, it’s something that I do wonder about. If it would have turned out differently. I don’t talk about him often. Not because I don’t care but because it is too painful and it is laced with regret, anger, and so many other negative emotions that I can’t unpack without professional supervision.

Everything always seemed to happen a moment too late at that time.

Like the callback to interview for a job that wanted to hire me after I already had finalized arrangements to move in a week. What if I’d bailed and taken that job? And stayed in Philadelphia? I don’t know what would have happened. If I would have continued to struggle. Or if I would have figured something out.

Part the Second

Four months after the divorce I was in my own apartment, surrounded floor to ceiling by the detritus of my failure. I have read several studies indicating that my environment played a role in my slow road to recovery. But I had no guidance, no support. I was figuring this out alone. I trusted no one. Especially not (or even) my own mother.

The ex came to see his children, but it also felt like he came to gloat over my situation. To try to convince the kids, or probably just the one, to go back with him so he wouldn’t be so lonely. Which I don’t understand since he was still seeing the woman he cheated on me with. But she was also in a relationship so he was “alone” in the sense that there was no one there to take care of his basic needs for the first time in over fifteen years.

Learned it by watching you

That visit was the only time he saw me in that apartment. He didn’t come to visit very often, and that was my intent when I moved to Texas. I had a hard enough time dealing with starting over. I honestly couldn’t stomach the idea of co-parenting. I wasn’t going to act like now that we were divorced he was going to be more of a parent than he was when we were married.

I came from a broken home. And unfortunately, I have personal experience of what happens when there is one parent who is better off financially than another. It causes more strife than necessary, and the affluent parent tries to compete for the love and affection (loyalty?) of the children to prove that they are better than the other guy. Meanwhile, the parent who is struggling (usually the one who has custody) will quietly, or not so quietly, grow and voice their resentment and hatred of the other parent while sending the children these mixed messages to try and repair what damage was done through their comments of the other parent.

Mixed messages which insist that the children should love their other parent, despite the fact that their custodial parent clearly does not. I never understood why my mother insisted that I should keep my relationship with my father despite the fact that I didn’t care for how he treated her, and she clearly did not like how he kept rubbing his new relationship and money in her face.

My own relationship with my father was itself broken. Like I wasn’t going to notice that

I learned from her mistakes, and I was self-aware enough to know my limits, and the ex and his new relationship were hard limits for me. Hence the big move. More trauma.

Four years house-poor

Four years later I bought a house, something that felt really crazy to me, but I was determined. I had that home for four years after that, and those four years passed in a blur of just making it from one day to the next. My motives for buying a house were to get away from my mother and give my children back some of what they had lost in the divorce. Some stability and a sense of permanence.

Not the best reasons, but I stuck to my guns that I could do it. Ironically, it was easier for me to buy a house than rent a house. That’s a rant for another time. It was an interesting four years, and in hindsight, I probably tried too hard to make my sons happy. I just wanted them to be happy. I should have spent the money on therapy for myself.

Owning that house was just a constant struggle to stay ahead of the bills while always falling behind. I didn’t know there was a term for my struggle: house-poor. There were things that I should have done early on which would have helped me financially, but I was too proud to ask for help, and trying to do it all alone. It’s not the sort of conversation that one has with middle schoolers, and I shouldered the burdens all on my own.

I didn’t do a lot of living during those four years. It was a blur of working one soul-sucking job after another for less pay than I was worth. All to get past the stigma of being a stay-at-home mother which left a large gap in my resume.

WFH before it was cool

During my time in the house, I had gotten another job to pay the bills. ironically, it was a work-from-home job – and this was pre-pandemic. I was making better money but it was still rough. I was able to save money now which was nice.

I was pretty good at what I was doing, to the point that I was able to get a promotion. But I was working too much, sacrificing time with my teens to scrape a living. Despite being at home, I rarely had free time, and I was always working. It was a real struggle as a single mother to be a parent and the breadwinner, even though my sons were teenagers now, they still needed me, and I was not really available.

Time passed in an unsatisfying blur.

Out of nowhere, I was suddenly let go, mysterious job cuts that still to this day leave a nasty taste in my mouth. The experience was demoralizing and broke me. It was like I regressed back to the time of the divorce.

I had no close relationships. The few friends I had made, had dissolved from basic betrayal from misplaced envy and jealousy. Were they ever actually my friends? Probably not and I didn’t miss them being gone. Real friends don’t leave you feeling like you give give give and get nothing in return.

In the end

Ten years later, thinking about it, all I am is angry. Nothing specific, I’m generally pissed off at myself, and the ex, at the fucking system. Life in general. I am still angry and that’s not fair. I lost a decade of my life to nothing. I have nothing to show for it. I can’t point to one thing from the last 10 years that I am proud of, or that I achieved.

That isn’t to say that I regret being divorced. Not at all. I was dying inside every day that I was married. I was in a couple, but lonely. Now I am alone, but I am not lonely. Despite the overall unfairness of the world, and every obstacle I come across, I have to make the next 10 years worth it. Or else.