I can’t tell if I should cry, celebrate, or just ignore it.
I got the email I’ve been waiting for the last 6 weeks, or maybe I should say the last year, the last year and half, maybe my entire marriage the last 10 years, or maybe the last 7 years, when the cracks in our marriage first started showing.
Either way, I got THE EMAIL, the one that says my divorce is final and my marriage has been dissolved.
Many people are happy when the big day is here. I dated a woman last winter who literally had a large bachelorette-style party when she learned her divorce was final. Some people spend years, and tens of thousands of dollars, working through all the legal agreements and are just relieved it’s over.
I’m in a place, where I’m still slowly, bitting off chucks of the reality I have to swallow around the pain of my marriage ending. I bite off a small chunk, grieve, meditate, cry, then calm down and go back to my life. To much, and I become paralyzed, I asphyxiate, and look for any temporary comfort. I still have to work, I still have to get out of bed no matter how bad my depression pins me down. There’s only so much comfort that can help me for so long, and already I feel like an addict, looking to just feel good to get me through the day.
My winter holidays were spent alone in the desert, hiking, journaling, and coming to terms with yet another chunk of understanding that my marriage is over. The time off from work gave me space to do this, and I tried to processes as much as I can. But I could only do so much.
So I move through life on a strict schedule of work, self care, pay bills, see friends, try not to think about covid, journal, meditate, remind myself to eat, pet my cat, do my laundry, and just keep going and hope that with time it gets easier. I’m in a much better place than I was a year ago. I can function a little bit now, I am working more, I have moved into a nicer place, and I feel happy sometimes. But every now and then, these details come up that remind me of the truth of my life and my marriage.
At the grocery store, I have to remind myself not to shop for the foods he eats, I try to not think about if he is able to eat at all these days. I’ll travel to a new place, and then recall how he hated to travel, and how he would have criticized traveling there. I remember his opinions on everything, places, politics, people, personalities, even driving. His words and ideas play over and over in my head whenever I encounter something on topic to them. Most painful, I remember the state he is in, and that I can’t help him, and he’s not okay. I remind myself, that this is his choice, his life is his own, not mine to care for, and I have to accept his choices for himself, no matter how destructive. I still have nightmares about him, trying trap me back into him, about him not being okay and needing me but me not able to help him. I’ll have a feeling of dread when I recall I haven’t heard from him purely because I have blocked his phone number.
So, I’m not sure how I feel about this. I’m going on a hike tomorrow with a friend. She recently lost her own wife through death, and understands what it means to grieve the end of a marriage. We’ll talk as we exert our energy and anxiety up a steep, intense hill. We’ll probably cry at some point, and talk through all of it. We’ll hug. Just like we have to in life, we’ll just keep walking, for what seems like forever. We’ll remind ourselves to breathe, to pace ourselves, and we’ll know that regardless of the pain, we have the strength to just keep going.
Thanks for reading.
