Happy Divorce!
Happy Divorce to me! It’s been a year and I can say it has been a very monumental year, also, it has passed very quickly. I took a moment to ruminate on how it has impacted my life so far…
I was going to celebrate this earlier, but honestly, it’s so not monumental that it actually skipped my mind. Getting divorced is one of those milestones I never thought I would have tacked on to my life CV, however, here I am.
One year a divorcée and I’m not nearly as traumatized as I thought I would be about it.
Frankly, I wish I had done it sooner, but in retrospect, I also believe things had to happen in the way/timing that they did or I would not be nearly as mentally stable as I am now.
As the date of my 1 yr anniversary was nearing, I mentioned to a close friend that it had almost been a year and they were surprised and asked me if I was sure. Which was hilarious and baffling at the same time, of course I am sure! After I stopped laughing at the question, I asked them why they were so surprised, they said because I just seemed like I’ve been divorced for much longer, not so emotionally distraught. True that.
Frankly, the year flew by for me. I still can’t believe it’s been that long, or at times that brief. I do feel that it’s been longer than a year since my divorce, probably because I have managed to pack that much living into the last twelve months.
It’s hard to feel depressed or down in the downy dumps about being divorced when I am busy living.
I don’t have time to waste on crying into my pillow. I spent plenty of time in the months before the divorce was final weeping and mourning over it all. It was exhausting. When I first moved to Texas I spent the first three months feeling sad. I was still mourning. I didn’t do much with myself, I spent a lot of time sleeping (not the good sleep but depression sleep–yes there is a difference), and some more crying.
One day though, I just had enough. I was fed up with doing nothing. The whole activity of mourning and being depressed felt like I was still trapped in the marriage to mr horrible, and worse, the longer I spent moping, the toll I could see it was taking on my kids. They were taking their emotional cues from me, and I was sucking at it big time. The longer it was taking me to get out of my funk, the longer it was going to take them to heal as well.
It was time I got busy living or die trying.
So I took action, starting with getting my own apartment, and moving out of my brother’s house. I was fortunate enough, and smart enough, to have secured a financial settlement which meant that I could then return to school full-time at no detriment to my children. I see no benefit in missing out on their life in the process of attempting to better my own. Smartest thing to do is live somewhere I could survive on my new fixed income without having to seek public assistance (that just causes complications with child support that I didn’t need) AND not need to get another job because I wanted to return to college full-time.
I had foolishly given up trying to finish my degree after I got out of the military to be a stay at home mom, thinking that it was what mr horrible wanted…well he did want it, but it didn’t make him treat me any better. For a long time I thought I was okay with my decision but as more time passed I realized that I felt unfinished, and partly pissed because it wasn’t entirely my choice to stop trying. In fact, a check in the pro-column for why I should divorce mr horrible were his repeated and successful attempts to sabotage my college classes, part-time or full-time.
It was like, for all the talk he made about how he “supported me” and “wanted me” to finish my degree, he went out of his way to make it impossible for me to go to school at all. If I tried to take night courses, he would suddenly change his work schedule so that he would not be available to stay home with the kids on the nights I had classes. If I had saved up money to sign up for classes, the money would suddenly get spent. Things like that are the opposite of being supportive, but that’s what I escaped and that’s why I knew that I had to finish my degree. To prove to myself, and to prove to my children, that their mother was not a quitter.
Hence my move to Texas. I knew that here I could make the money go further, meaning a better life for me and my children. Divorce is hard enough without having to add a reduced standard of living to the mix. I knew some things were going to be changing, such as living in apartment versus living in a single family home, but it’s all about the attitude with which such changes are dealt with.
Once again, my approach was going to guide the way my children adjusted to the changes. Going back to school full time has been incredibly rewarding. Knowing that I am able to provide my children with a nice place to live, decent public schools, and a happy mother doing something that she has wanted to do for a long time is priceless.
Twelve months ago I would not have expected to be doing this well. Twelve months ago I would not have foreseen that my children would be so emotionally healthy, and more so than they ever were in the 14 years I was married to their father.
When I finally got my shit together and moved on, I moved on with a vengeance. Looking back and then looking forward at what is in store for me is a helluva anniversary present to myself. I am going to be more than okay.
