What did divorce do to me?
Even though right now is where I would try my hardest not to insert some cliche line about hindsight and how one small decision can change your life, but in reality that's what divorce did to me. One day, in the upstairs bathroom one left behind cellphone on a bathtub side, my life changed.
It's been almost two years since separating and almost one year exactly that I've been half of a divorced party. Through my relationship with God, I've found ways to not only forgive him but forgive myself as well. It's a constant battle of letting go of guilt and shame and feelings of failure. During the process, little did I know that I would have so much alone time to reflect on what a divorce would really mean in my life.
All the wheels in my life had/have been spinning at once. Both my father and brother were sentenced to "hard" prison time, my issues with my father have been in the front of my mind every day, I had to let go of my ex and see him move on and love someone else, and I had to come to peace with finding new ways to address my once husband. It seems like such a small thing that we never think about. When addressing him to other people I felt this sense of failure referring to him as my ex-husband but calling him the father of my children made me feel like I was never good enough to marry him. When the water boils away, the residue of the issue is internal. I suppose I never felt good enough to be anyone's wife, which is one of the many reasons why I stayed married for so long.
Don't get me wrong. There were plenty of good moments in our marriage, we have two beautiful children and I learned a lot about myself and at the end, learned a lot about the kind of Godly wife I should have been. (Then maybe I could have single-handedly saved my marriage. See what I did there? I still think I could have done it). But when I'm alone, sitting on my couch alone and waiting for my kids to return to me; how am I supposed to feel?
Are we, as divorced and single mothers allowed to feel triumphant for releasing ourselves from a relationship that was volatile to us? Are we allowed to feel successful for raising our children? Are we allowed to fall in love again? Are we allowed to be happy? Are we allowed to move on with our lives without feeling guilt, like it's too soon?
I've come to the conclusion that there's really no appropriate and definite answer to any of these question. (Sorry if you felt like I was the holy grail of divorce answers for a second). The truth is, I'm still learning all this and as frustrating as it may sound, it's a day by day person-by-person decision. We all deal with pain differently and most differently from our ex's. What we may feel is appropriate or timely may be different than what they feel. The truth here, is that those right or wrong decisions can no longer be entertained by us (a couple) anymore. We're divorced.
Recently my mom texted me and instead of typing "divorce" she wrote "D." I know she was just trying to be sensitive, but I told her that it was okay to say it. I've learned not to treat people and things like Voldemort (that's the evil guy in Harry Potter whose name you're not allowed to say) because unlike Harry Potter, the less I called people and things by their names the less I faced them and the more power they gained.
I know my honesty tends to turn some people off of me and that's okay. All of this is just my truth, my rants, my small pieces of honesty for myself and hopefully somebody reads it and feels like for the few minutes that they are in my blog world that they're not alone.
So, "What to feel when you're being told how to feel about your divorce?"
Any way you want to.
