How a Survivor Survives Divorce

Divorce sucks. Regardless of the circumstances between you and your former spouse, it's going to be difficult. The number of years you were married doesn't seem to lessen the emotional sting, either. I have an aunt who recently divorced after forty years of marriage and a close friend who, like me, divorced after five. Both have experienced and are still experiencing pangs of grief that, like chronic illnesses, really never go away completely. But, I'm not writing this piece for "normal" divorcees (whatever that means). This short essay is for anyone else who, like me, had to divorce swiftly, with a protection order.

I was both unlucky and lucky. It took me an embarrassing amount of time (about two years) to fully realize the man I had married in 2021 at the tender age of 25 had become very mentally ill, and the illegal substances he was using to self-medicate were worsening his condition rapidly. I say this was embarrassing because his symptoms were not subtle. He stopped eating regular meals with me. He rarely slept. (He was a fan of powerful stimulants, which worsened his drug-induced paranoia.) He constantly accused me of "letting bugs in" to our house--bugs that only he could see. He only left our second bedroom, which he used as his office in better times, to use the bathroom, and sometimes not even for that. (After I finally asked him to leave, I found a large plastic bottle of old urine stored in his closet.) He once threatened to kill me for not buying the "correct" gauze for a self-inflicted wound to his hand. (He'd punched it through a wall.) This was all the unlucky stuff.

I was lucky because before my ex-husband actually did kill me, I found help. I live in a community that takes both suicidal and homicidal behavior very seriously in its university students, and my ex was a graduate student working on a Ph.d. A Threat Assessment team, which consisted of a university cop and a certified social worker, contacted me after monitoring my ex's behavior and determined he was a threat to both the campus and the community. The university experienced a campus shooting in 1991, which had also been by a grad student. No one took any chances.

The day I sat in the Threat Assessment team's tiny conference room on the edge of campus was one of the most difficult of my life. The cop and the social worker took turns talking to me in slow, gentle voices. They gave me a cup of tea to sip. It was a generic orange-spice tea. To this day, I can't bear to drink it.

The social worker looked at me directly and asked, "How did he get the drugs?" This was a secret I'd been carefully guarding from my friends and family for nearly two years. In a split second, perhaps out of exhaustion, I blurted out, "He orders them online." My ex could find almost anything on the Internet, including a white powder closely related to Ecstasy that was manufactured in a lab somewhere overseas. As long as it was labeled NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION, it could legally be mailed to a U.S. address--our address. I hope this still isn't possible.

Why did I allow him to do this? I'm still trying to answer this question for myself, three years later. Maybe the memoir I've started writing will get me there.

I collapsed in heaving sobs in that conference room, feeling an odd mix of relief for finally telling someone the truth and crushing guilt for "outing" the man who was at that point still my husband.

The social worker, a woman in her fifties, waited for me to calm down. She passed me tissues. Her eyes were gentle but focused when I looked up. "Listen to me," she said. "This probably feels like one of the worst days of your life. I understand that. But I want you to know that it won't feel quite this bad tomorrow. Tomorrow will be a little better than yesterday, and that'll keep happening. You're going to be okay." I nodded but said nothing. I'd cried so much that I couldn't speak. I might have said a small "thank you" when they dismissed me. I hope I did.

The social worker had been right. Each day was a little better than the last, but some moments still hurt like hell. It hurt like hell to walk to the county courthouse and apply for a two-week protection order, which the cop had helped me get. It hurt like hell to go back to the courthouse less than a week later and testify to a judge why I should be granted a one-year protection order from my husband. (When the judge asked if I would seek divorce during that year of protection, he granted the order without any further questions.) And it hurt like hell when my ex violated that order a few months later, for something so sweet it seemed ridiculous: he'd ordered me a small gift on Etsy for my birthday and had it delivered to my new address, which he unfortunately knew about since he'd helped me find the apartment. (This was before the serious stuff started, when I naively thought that we'd just be separated for a little while, that things could get better.) I had an attorney represent me in court. His attorney settled with mine: forty-eight hours in jail for the unauthorized birthday present. I did not look at my ex when a court bailiff cuffed him and led him outside. Hearing the metal cufflinks was enough.

If you're reading this essay, then you might have gone through or are just starting a similar process. Or maybe you know someone who is. Regardless, I do not want to tell you what works and what doesn't. There's simply no "magic formula" that works for everyone. But what I can do is share what helped me survive one of the most difficult years of my life.

This is how I survived my protection-order divorce from an emotionally and physically abusive partner:

1. I got help. I cannot emphasize enough how vitally important this is. It took me a long time, but once I got both professional and personal help, my nightmare was over. This included many people beyond that cop and social worker. In addition to the small Threat Assessment team, I also received help from the law college of my university (which offered free legal representation for everything related to the protection order), my divorce attorney (who was of course not free but did a very good job of communicating with the court and shielding me from communicating with my ex in person), a licensed counselor (whom I saw at least twice a month for most of the year I was getting divorced), and several close friends and family members. I also joined a twelve-step recovery program, both before and during my divorce, which helped perhaps more than any of the above since my recovery process taught me how to empower and forgive myself. (I won't disclose the name of my program because I want to honor the practice of anonymity, but there's a 12-step group for pretty much anyone out there, and since the global pandemic started, most of the meetings that traditionally met in-person across the country are now online. I encourage you to do your own research if you think you might benefit from a recovery group.)

2. I tried to be gentle with myself. I wasn't always good at this, but it got easier with practice. If I ate a bunch of popcorn for dinner one night, for example, I didn't berate myself. Divorce is an incredibly exhausting process. You probably won't feel like cooking as much as you might in better circumstances.

3. I took many long walks. Though my parents weren't big fans of me walking alone in the same community where my ex was still supposedly living, I carried a copy of my protection order with me and walked anyway. Thankfully, nothing bad happened. Walking felt like a small accomplishment for each day, even if I wasn't walking to any particular destination. It felt like a manageable form of exercise and helped me process many difficult thoughts.

4. I tried my best to avoid vices. I was fortunate to lack any sort of gripping addiction like my ex, but it's probably normal for anyone to reach for something--be it booze, food, or sex--when they are experiencing intense hurt. I dabbled with all three of the above but ultimately found they didn't really help. I turned to long walks instead.

5. I wrote in a journal. This is a habit I've kept since I was little, but it became vitally important during my divorce. I once carved a long string of obscenities in angry all-caps on four pages of my journal-notebook. I don't remember why I did that, but it made me feel better on that particular day. Best of all, the only thing that was harmed during that rant was a couple of lined pages and a ballpoint pen.

6. I believed that my life would slowly get better and my grief will slowly lessen. Positive thinking, as cheesy as it sounds, really does help. This is another skill I learned from 12-step recovery, but anyone can practice mindful gratitude. I can say that now, three years later, I am still processing a lot of grief over the loss of the man I married, but I managed to do a lot of good stuff for myself, too. I took the opportunity to move to Beijing in 2018 and taught high school English there for two years (which will be another topic I'll write about soon!). That probably wouldn't have happened without a divorce. I've also learned how to be more responsible and loving to myself, and I am now capable, at the slightly wiser age of 34, of having a healthy, loving relationship. It has been and still is a slow process, but I'm going to keep going. I hope you will, too.

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