Waking up after divorce

I feel that if I am going to talk to people about their loss and the things we go through, and what it’s like to get through this, that I should share some of my experience, so you know who I am. I’m going to start from the beginning, but for now I will give you the quick version.

15 years ago, I was a full-time student with 4 kids. I felt like I was at the top of my game. I was healthy, fit and even after being a single mom for 14 years, I still looked young for my age. I had men calling me left and right, but I turned them all down. I knew that God had the perfect man for me, and he was just around the corner. When I met my ex-husband I gave into the relationship from the beginning, 100%. We were married two years later.

Immediately within the first month I started getting sick. I could hardly get out of bed in the morning. Within two months I had to quit school. Within a year, an injury to my upper body from years before, that had never been a problem, turned into a full-blown disability. Within two years I was on steroids and struggling to do anything but sit on the couch all day. Within three years, I couldn’t keep a job and was applying for social security. Within four, my husband was taking phone calls outside. Within four and half, I caught him exchanging emails with two women who I thought were my friends. I asked for counseling to no avail and by year five, it was over, and he wanted out.

I woke up one morning after he left and walked into the bathroom, looked in the mirror and wondered who in the heck I was looking at? It seemed like just a few short years ago those eyes were bigger and there had been more sparkle in them. That smile was full, those teeth a little whiter, the skin fresher, the hair thicker. What happened to me? I felt like Rip Van Winkle must have felt, waking up after 100 years of sleeping. All the sudden aged and in an unknown, changed world.

I hadn’t fallen asleep though, I was awake for the whole thing. Watching my youth fade and this new person emerge. I’m sure I couldn’t have slept through what caused all this aging, the yelling, all the fear, the pain. Especially trying to hang onto what I had and still hearing those heartbreaking words “I want a divorce.” I thought I would cry forever after realizing that they weren’t just words this time. He meant it. I kept thinking, how could he? I’ve given so much here, given into everything he wanted, changed who I was to make him happy.

Over the next who knows how long, my world continued to fall apart. I was disabled, no job, teenage girls to raise, who were not his, and house to pay for. The state hit a cold spell and the pipes broke in the garage, then under the house, the canopy over my car collapsed and the furnace went out. Then 5 days before Christmas I was served divorce papers. When I read them, I was just amazed at what he had said about me. Here I had given so much and tried so hard, but in his words the failure of our marriage was my fault. Of course, the tears started again and my heart broke a little more. I could not believe the man that I had loved was saying such terrible things about me, when I seemed to have been the only one trying to keep this marriage together. I prayed all the time but that day I finally said, “Lord, I know that I will eventually be ok but if you could please just let me know when so I could see some light here that would be wonderful.” I’m a strong person and I kept reminding myself that I have always made it through everything and been ok, but I was getting to the end of my sanity. I was feeling so overwhelmed. I sent my teenage girls to their dad’s house for Christmas break and cried for over a week.

New Years hit like a bang but when I got up on the first of January, I looked in the mirror again. Feeling my broken heart, made me realized it was still beating. At that moment I really woke up. Those tears clearing, I saw a small sparkle in my eyes, my lips spread, and I saw a glint of white in my teeth. With every beat, that was still there in that heart, the color came back to my skin. My hair felt a little thicker. Life started to return before my very eyes. I realized if I had to change to what I had seen in the mirror when he had walked in to make him happy, how could being in that relationship be healthy? How could it be worth it to try and hang on? If having him leave made my life come back, wasn’t I better off? Every second after that I’ve moved a little farther forward. I’ve seemed to de-age a little more, becoming a little more alive.

I can tell everyone that I’m not angry towards him but I am. I’ve turned it into a positive thing though. I’ve lost 40 pounds; I have an active social life already and I’m becoming me again. Some people wouldn’t say I was successful cause I’m broke, financially and somewhat physically, I still have no idea how things will be handled. However, I feel I am successful, and I’ve actually gotten the best revenge of all, I’m moving on in a healthy way and not jumping passed my grief and into another relationship.

That is one of the hardest things to do in a divorce, or with a loss in our lives, to move on or turn that anger that you into a positive thing. It has been hard for me, and I still have days that I feel like I make no movement at all, or I haven’t gotten anywhere. I still get up, I still try to get something done, my heart is still beating.

I am hoping that we can work together and find more and more ways to hold each other up through our lives after divorce and loss. Giving each other hope through our stories and ideas to make those changes that will help all of us be successful. Hopefully we will all feel less alone in what we are going through in the days and years to come. There are so many things that maybe we went through before that we knew how to do and now, aren’t as easy as they seemed to be before, dating again, finding new friends, dealing with the kids. There are so many things that we have become accustomed to in life that will now be different after our loss. Day to day things that we never realized would affect us. That is what we all need to share, how are we getting through and moving on; because through our sharing we learn we do not have to stand alone, there are people around us who understand, or who may have noticed already that we have experienced something, or that we have changed in some way. All of that is support, it is hope and it is something that will help us keep going until we are ok.

Update: It has been several years since I originally wrote this, and today I am completely healed. I have two masters degrees, five published books, a ton of articles, a blog, a job, my kids are grown, I have grandchildren (lots of them) and my life is full. I learned a lot from what I went through to get where I am now, and I would love to share what I’ve learned with all of you. That is why I write about it, so that we can all understand that we survive, we learn, and we grow; life as we knew it moves on and we heal.

If you would like to share your story or ideas for others, please feel free to contact me at [email protected] and I will spread the word. This is an area for people to share, get ideas and support. Come back often and check in because we really want you to know we understand everything you're going through. You can also find me on my Facebook page, it would be a privilege to have you follow me, be my friend, send comments or messages.