Divorced Life

I have found that it is necessary for me to separate the situation from the person in order to forgive and move on with my life. If I constantly blame the “ex” for all that has gone on it blocks me from moving forward. Case in point…if it is always someone else’s fault, then the requirement for my sanity and quality of life becomes the resolution of their difficulties or problems. I looked at my ex and what he has become and I realize that I will stay sick and miserable if I wait for him to straighten up…wait!! I did! For several years I kept holding on to the hope that the emotional difficulties, the anger and his unhappiness would clear up and everything would be like it was ….well???…hmmm….was it ever all that great? What I have discovered is that I fell in love with the POTENTIAL of the man…not who he REALLY was. I lived with that hope for years. Problem with living on only hope is that it is NOT reality and it necessitates creating somewhat of an alternate universe in which to operate. Then nothing is real except the feelings that all this invokes. Whew!!

Today I see that there is freedom in acceptance of what is…right now…not deciding that things are going to go according to some plan I have formulated for the “perfect” union with another. There are a lot of tools that I have learned to use to do that and I will elaborate on some of those in the coming days.

Though missing from action in the literary sense, I have had more action than I really want lately. The last couple of weeks have been spent cleaning up the wreckage of our past, cleaning organizing, working toward the sale of the house. Our divorce was legally final on October 30 and I for one, breathed a sigh of relief. I have done my grieving over the last year and a half of separation. I have my daughter back and we are building a life together. My oldest had shared an apartment with me and has moved out this weekend to live with her “intended”. Tomorrow the teen moves into her own space in the apartment. We spent lots of time at the house getting rid of and letting go of. It was tough on both of us. Being around “sperm donor” (a term to match her anger) was difficult for both of us. Maybe it was the finality of the divorce, maybe we just became tired of the verbal tennis match, but the “ex” and I managed to work together for an entire day having a garage sale.

This is what I learned recently through all this…I still love him but HATE his behavior. There IS a difference. I know that his outward behavior is a manifestation of the pain he feels and I am sorry for him. It may be necessary for a man to create an alternate reality to cushion the pain of loss. Whatever it is, I know the truth and don’t have to catch the curve balls he keeps throwing at me. I am happy to be free….I hope he finds the freedom to live life again. He is no longer my project. Whew!

After over a year of bickering, negotiating and compromises, I got a call from the attorney yesterday. He signed the decree!!! I promptly hung up the phone and went whooping and dancing through the warehouse at work as if I had one the lottery. It has been as though I was swimming through a vast body of mud at times…slogging along but not quite sinking. Today I feel a huge weight has been lifted (yeah…about 175 pounds of it) and that I am free to move on with the rest of my life. No longer to I have to consider my marital status when I date. I can try to clean up my credit score as that has suffered during all this. I have a tangible plan for visitation and hopefully one day my daughter will want to see her father again. However, today I am happy for the distance they have just so both of them can gain some perspective. There is so much more to tell….

In the end, leaving a marriage of 17 years created in me a numbness…I was somewhat of a sleepwalker at first. Finding myself nearly 50 years old and thrust out into the world of dating woke me up eventually. I found it exciting - and terrifying! I wavered between wanting to rush out and play or hiding out in the closet until some handsome stranger came and rescued me. (o.k. the stress of the last few years created a slight neurosis) Now that I was alone I could enjoy copious amounts of ice cream, stop shaving my legs, and run around the house in those well-worn gray sweats I can’t seem to part with. But I knew if I gave into those temptations that I would undermine my entire life by creating that much more of a problem. Not to mention much MORE of me to love if I got lucky enough to find a man who liked hairy women who live on ice cream. If I allowed this huge upset in my life to take a negative direction, then how could I learn anything from this experience? Rather than view this as an end to something…why not look at it as a beginning?

Though I have been married twice, my dating experience was limited to almost 30 years in the past. Deciding to leave a marriage is shock enough to the system. Yet stepping away for the first time and settling into my new apartment, the idea of freedom hit me like a sledgehammer. I was now free to do most anything I wanted to do. Wow! Heady stuff huh?? Scary? Yeah, but being curious by nature, I began to explore my options for stepping out into the dating world. My circle of friends were HIS circle of friends. I couldn’t recall anyone in that circle I was remotely interested in. I am not exactly a churchgoer so that was not an immediate option. I DID discover all kinds of options sitting in front of the computer. There is an amazing array of dating sites out there…and I explored many of them.

As a new blogger here I am a virgin in the ways of the blog. But I am becoming an expert on human nature and how to negotiate dating in the prime of my life.

I start my dialog from….what else?? a Starbucks patio sipping an iced vanilla latte and nibbling on zucchini nut bread. Though my desire is to share this moment with a companion, I am actually quite okay with the solitude. It occurs to me that I probably need to embrace this time alone after my encounter with the “wish-he-were-my-ex-already”. I believe I will refer to him as my “NEX” (nearly-ex) from here on out.

I guess it would be presumptuous of me to think I know what others in my situation need to hear..or read..or experience. I have learned that all I have is my experience, strength and hope to share. I pray that in doing so that at least one person may stumble on my words and be excited, comforted, or learn from what they find here.