You never know what challenges others face

As I expand my social network and create new connections and rekindle old connections, I'm seeing life through different perspectives and I'm viewing people differently.  At first I was frustrated with the people who didn't step up in the ways I thought they would to support me but I wanted to think long game.  These were people who were important to me that I enjoyed spending time with.  I didn't want my challenges to be some test of our relationship.  And fortunately, so many other people stepped up in so many unexpected ways so I just refocused my energy elsewhere but kept the door open.

As the months have passed, I'm seeing sometimes the reason people don't step up for us like we want them to is because they are facing their own challenges in their life.  Sometimes the timing is just off for them to have the bandwidth to support someone else.  Sometimes people disappoint us because our expectations don't match what they are able to do in that moment.

So I'm going to continue trying to give people grace and think towards the long game with the people I enjoy being around and care about even if they can't always be there for me.

App Notifications

How many apps will I have to uninstall and reinstall on my phone to stop the reminders of him (assuming that will work for them all)?  It's not enough to just make sure I am not logged into his account.  Or for him to have changed his password and e-mail.  The notifications still come.

It started with the Delta app.  I got a notification every time his bag was loaded on or off a plane and every time his boarding zone was called.  First it was for a trip I knew about to go visit his mom.  Then it was a trip to the west coast I wasn't even aware of which sent my mind reeling in directions I didn't want it to go.

And then it was the ChargePoint app.  His vehicle is now done charging and drawing very little power, in case I wanted to know - which I don't!

The ironic part is that I doubt he is dealing with the same.  I don't think he had ever logged in as me on his phone to any of these types of apps.  He never needed to because I was the one to handle this kind of stuff, especially travel related.  All he ever had to do was just show up and follow me around as I dealt with tickets, passports, itineraries, reservations, etc.

A Dark Place

In a group meeting last night someone commented that I’m in a dark space right now. I was a bit taken aback as I had not yet looked at these past months that way. To be honest I didn’t quite know if it was true but I think I nodded. Since that comment though, that phrase has stuck with me. It doesn’t feel right. It feels too black and white like it misses the complexity of what I’m going through, the complexity of emotions, the growth, the contradictions, etc.

I’m definitely moving in and out of dark moments. The lows are very low.  But I’m not stuck there. I don’t like labeling an entire season of my life negatively when it also contains plenty of good. The label doesn’t feel like it fits and it feels like it comes with expectations that aren’t right for me. 

So no, I’m not in a dark place. I’m in a period of challenges and growth. I’m falling in low moments as I experience darkness and then picking myself up to find joy. I’m moving through moments of darkness towards the light of healing, growth, and a better, more fulfilling life. And that cycle of darkness and light is ever-repeating just as the sun rises and falls every day.  

He has shown me who he is, it's time to believe him.

I was talking to my IT head today because when HR submits my name change, it will likely immediately deactivate my ID which is used for so much in the office and I won't get a new ID for maybe two weeks.  So I was trying to understand if they had any workarounds because it was going to get very difficult to do my job and as I discovered in that conversation, I would have no telework capabilities for that time period.

The anger in me had been building all weekend as I was overwhelmed with all that needed to be done to separate all our stuff, change my address, and then change my name and I think it boiled over with learning that I would be losing my telework days.  A co-worker came to sit in my office just as I was reeling from all this and it all came out in tears and frustration as I poured out the pain and anger I was feeling.

To not have any answers as to why he did this to me....  To be bearing the brunt of the consequences of his decision.....  To have watched him emotionless this weekend be so uncaring and cold.....  Who is this man?

I will admit in that moment of anger and frustration I sent him a text.  I wanted him to feel the pain I was feeling.  I wanted him to know the consequences of the decision he made and the way he went about making it.  To be honest, I wanted him to care.  The man I thought I knew would have cared.  I wanted to know that man was still in there, that I hadn't been that wrong about him, hadn't misjudged him that poorly.

And I wanted him to know that the worst thing he did to me was the non-explanation that leaves me in so much doubt and confusion.  And that was the one thing he could actually still fix, if he actually cared about me as a fellow human being.

The response that came back was uncaring, cold, and repeated much the same about not being happy.  And then it made a vague statement about how he feels like he deserves "better treatment/more affection".  

How I treated him poorly is beyond me?  I couldn't even guess.  I suspect that his perception is still so clouded over with pessimism that he can't even accurately interpret what he sees in me or that he is holding on to something I did to him 15 years ago that he never told me about.  Am I perfect?  No.  But I am not aware of any specific ways I treated him poorly and I cared enough about him that if he had brought anything up, I would have done my best not to do things that bothered or hurt him.

And I can only laugh at the comment about affection.  He was the one who put limits on affection and backed off on sex.  Looking back, I suspect the resentment goes back to that point where he pulled back on affection and sex.  He doesn't seem to get that resentment kills intimacy.  He chose to hold on to whatever grudges he had without saying a word (and still hasn't said a word as to what those grudges were) instead of communicating and working through whatever issues existed.

So if he thinks he deserves more affection, he actually has to put the work into a relationship to have the hard conversations when he gets upset about something so that he doesn't kill any chance of enjoying affection by holding on to resentment.  

My text this morning accomplished nothing except further rile me up.  I don't know why I sent it to him.  Yeah, I think I do.  I've reached a point in my healing where the good man I had believed him to be is completely crumbling before my eyes.  I'm realizing he never was who I thought it was.  And that is devastating to realize about the man you loved for two decades and invested so much into.  

So as this image crumbles before my very eyes, so does my sense of reality and trust.  That is a shattering thing to experience and so in the back of my mind there is still some denial that maybe I wasn't that wrong about him.  By sending the text, I was facing that denial and so hoped I would see a glimpse of the man I thought he was.  The response back confirmed he never was that man and that who he is showing me he is today is who he really is.  He is an emotionally immature, selfish man who lacks any empathy.

He can put on a good show and even show some sympathy when he wants to and it benefits him but he doesn't have the ability or desire to actually put himself in someone else's shoes and care about how his actions affect them.  Maybe it's really good that I am getting out now.

Seeing what I want to see

Maybe the reason I have struggled to make sense of the explanation he has given me for leaving is that it just doesn't fit with the good man I believed him to be.  What if I have been wrong about him all along and the answer is that he truly is as immature, selfish, and unkind as he has shown me this year?

I'm so angry

As I work through a never-ending list of things to do to separate assets/debts, changing usernames and passwords, and change my name, I'm just so angry at him.  I trusted him.  I made decisions for my life based on lies he has told me over the years and information he withheld from me.  I changed my name to his because I thought he had vowed to protect my heart and be an honest partner in it for the long run and trusted that he would follow through on those promises.

Lack of emotion

I sat down with my ex-husband in a conference room at our apartment complex for about an hour and a half today.  I hadn't seen him in four weeks, since the day I handed him my set of keys to our old apartment after we had spent the day cleaning it.

There was no emotion in him.  He commented that he didn't expect the divorce to be signed this fast so that we would have more time to do all this.  I asked him if he thought everything this year happened so fast to give him whiplash like it had given me.  He hesitated, as clearly it had not.  And there were absolutely no emotions present today.  It felt like a business meeting not the dissolution of an almost two decade marriage.  It's as if he is glad to be rid of me.

I get that he is likely avoiding.  That's what he does best.  I'm sure there are emotions of some sort he has so deeply buried that they will stay buried until the wrong moment when they bubble up in a way that comes with consequences.

I swear he documented every single word that was said by either of us.  I think he spent more time typing than he did actually separating accounts.  I have a lengthy e-mail to prove it.

He specifically had that he would change his log in information on Hulu on the two page typed list of things to do.  And then when I pushed back against that one and requested that I be allowed to continue to have access to it as long as it was paid for by the grandfathered cell phone plan he got to keep (that I had to lose).  I pointed out he not only has a cheaper phone bill (with a better plan) because of that grandfathered plan but on top of that had free access to Hulu.  

Then he was worried I would charge things within the Hulu account.  I asked him what exactly he thought I was going to charge and what I had done to betray his trust at all.  I have been so honest and transparent throughout this process and incredibly fair to him despite how he treated me and how dishonest he has been with me that this accusation really hit me.  And then suddenly it was all moot as he logged in and saw that his credit card wasn't even on file with Hulu as the billing just says it is paid for by the cell phone company.  So I still get access to Hulu.

We still have to get together one more time to go to a couple of places to make changes to assets.  So I'll have to go through this again.

Do you know how painful it is to look someone in the eye who you invested decades in and loved dearly and have them look back at you like you are nothing?  And it doesn't help that I have made clear to him that the explanations he have given me have not been enough to give me any real closure, yet he has done nothing to self-reflect and try to better articulate his reasons to help me with that closure.  That shows such a disregard for someone else's feelings and such a lack of empathy - to care that little about how the way you are leaving that significant of a relationship is so negatively affecting the other person.

I know, when people show you who they are, you should believe them.   And trust me I do.  But that doesn't make the heartbreak any less.  That doesn't fix the trust that he shattered.  How could I be this wrong about someone?  How could I give this much of a benefit of the doubt to someone who hasn't deserved it for so long and maybe never deserved it?

Changing my name

The process has begun.  I obtained a certified copy of the divorce judgment yesterday and then immediately logged onto Social Security's website to start the application for a new card in my new name.   The website encouraged me to then make an appointment to have them review a certified copy of the judgment and they had availability today over the lunch hour.

Yesterday, this felt so empowering.  As I look at the long to-do list of things to do now that my divorce is final, this task felt like the most important one to me personally.  

It feels a bit like a contradiction though.  I didn't want this marriage to end.  I truly loved my now ex-husband and was willing to work through whatever we needed to work through.  I wasn't ready to throw it all away.  That's not to say that now, with time and reflection, I don't realize how that just wasn't possible.  Too much has happened this year that I couldn't go back.  I will never look at him the same or trust him.  But being in a hurry to erase his name just feels like a contradiction from all that.  Or maybe I just recognize how important it is to my healing.  

Earlier today I told someone that I wish I had never changed my name in the first place.  And then my mind went back to all the reasons I did in the first place.  There was a time where I felt proud to have his last name.

So I woke up this morning, admired the plants I had planted on my balcony last night, and got excited about this next step.  And then about an hour before the appointment, the nerves took over.  I don't quite understand it but I had butterflies in my stomach and I couldn't concentrate.

But I worked through the nerves, put on my shoes, and walked to the Social Security office.  Twenty-five minutes later, I was headed out of there with a temporary social security card in my birth name.  Next week's goal is changing my driver's license.  

Gender and How Society Views Single Men and Women

When my husband got back from his first solo cruise in September, he made a comment to me about how much sympathy he received from so many people for being alone.  

When I went on my solo cruise, I didn't experience the same.  Many just left me alone or ignored me.  But I also got questioned for not having a man.  One passenger as we walked off the ship in Bermuda called out to me "wandering this island all on your own, don't you have a man?"

It just struck me as example of how expectations differ based on your gender and how easily you are judged for things people do not understand.  Overall, our society is far more judgmental of women and quicker to excuse bad behavior by men.  As a result a divorced (or single) man often doesn't face the same reactions and negative perceptions as a divorced (or single) woman.

Twenty-five Pounds!

I stepped on the scale this morning as I try to do every Friday, although I missed the last two Fridays because of my travels.  I was down another 2.2 pounds from October 4 which makes a total of 25.2 pounds since my husband told me he was questioning our relationship in May.  That's a total of over 25 pounds in just 5 months all because of the stress which has affected my appetite, sleep, and body.

I am down two pants sizes and so until I went shopping this week, I had no pants that fit me anymore and many of the dresses I bought last January, I'm swimming in.  I did a little happy dance yesterday as I went to work in pants that finally felt good on me.

I had the weight to lose so it is good that it is gone.  And I admit that I do look good.  But this is not how I wanted to lose it.  And seeing the difference in my body is a daily reminder of the toll my body has taken because of things beyond my control.   It's a reminder of the pain and the hurt.  And so I wish people wouldn't dismiss those feelings so quickly as they look at my weight loss through a lens of jealousy.  I wouldn't wish what I am going through on anyone.  The weight loss is not worth all the pain I have experienced to get there.

Grace and Empathy

I went back and read this blog from start to date yesterday.  With the divorce being final, I thought it would be a good time to reflect on how far I've come and where I'm at.

I was struck by some of the descriptions and phrases I used at how well they put me back in the moment or how well in retrospect they hit the nail on the head.  I've processed so much over the last three months and spent so much time reflecting to get where I'm at now.  I'm by no means done but I feel movement towards finding closure and starting to heal.

I was also surprised by how much grace and empathy I expressed towards my ex-husband throughout the entire three months.  It was probably one of the most consistent themes.  I don't feel bitterness.  I don't even feel resentment.  There's still plenty of anger and pain but I'm not holding on to it.  I'm moving through it and even in those lowest moments seeing the good.

I wonder if he realizes he is walking away from someone who is still giving him the benefit of the doubt and feeling empathy towards him even as he breaks my heart and treats me the way he has.  When I shared this with one of my friends today, she hesitated and then said that she doesn't intend this to be critical but she thinks I have been being too kind.

It's done. It's over.

On the first business day after the 30 day waiting period had passed, the Judge signed our judgment of divorce.  So as of late Monday, I am a divorced woman, although I didn't get the notice until yesterday morning.  

My ex-husband felt the need to be the first one to tell me with an e-mail early yesterday morning.  Why?  I don't know.  My attorney forwarded me the documents a few hours later and he acknowledged that he knew I would be hearing it from my attorney.

When I got that e-mail, I was at work and none of my close colleagues had arrived yet.  I will admit I closed my door, collapsed on the floor and cried it out.  I knew this day was coming but you never know you will truly feel when it happens.  The finality of it all was overwhelming along with the speed it had all happened.  

How someone can go from appearing to be happy and telling me how much he loves me to telling me he is done to filing for divorce to it all being final in less than 6 months after a 19 marriage is beyond anything I can comprehend.  Honestly, I think it is pretty messed up to be able to run away from a long-term marriage that quickly.

But then after I had cried, I picked myself up off the floor, wipe away my tears, and I went for a walk around my floor hoping to find a colleague to be near.  And I found one and then another and then another.  By 11:00 a.m. I had two offers for plans for lunch.  Before I went to bed that day, I had two offers from friends to hang out in the upcoming days.

And when I changed my name on Facebook and posted about the divorce being final, I got so much support over my name change with a quick offer to change my name on my choir cubby the next day at practice and suggestions to update my e-mail address (which has my married name).

There are so many amazing people in this world if you take the time to get to know them and connect with them.

I did a little something for myself too.  At lunch, I had bought two Swiss chard plants so after work I headed out shopping.  I purchased to window boxes, dirt, and more plants at Home Depot.  And I went to Ross Dress for Less and found four pairs of pants at reasonable prices that actually fit me (two work and two jeans) so now I have pants that won't fall down!  And I picked up some groceries including these amazing scones I'm having for breakfast now.

So after the blessings and emotional challenges of yesterday, I woke up today knowing I was divorced for the first time.  I paused a moment on my Facebook page to see that I really truly had changed my name.  I can't believe it is over.

Chasing the next shiny object

I have reason to believe that my husband has his eye on another woman already.  I will admit that it doesn't surprise me.  Thinking about his behaviors throughout our marriage I should have seen it coming.

I don't remember what our car total got to in the end.  I know we surpassed 20 cars purchased during our marriage a couple (few?) years back.  Yes, that is an average of more than one car a year.  And if you consider that early on in our marriage when we had less money, we managed to keep cars for about 3 years.  That timeline quickly sped up to less than a year, sometimes only 6 months as the years progressed.  These past years, living downtown where I can walk most places, I drove so infrequently that I got to the point where I wouldn't even familiarize myself with a new car until I actually needed to drive it.  There are a number I never drove before we sold them.

At times, I tried to push back to slow him down but it never worked for long.  He was so programmed to need instant gratification and always chasing the next shining thing.  The research for the next car would start as soon as the new car was parked in the garage.

I now realize that was because he hasn't figured out that happiness needs to come from inside.  Happiness gained from external sources is fleeting.  It gives you those moments of joy before the newness wears off and then you are left with nothing.  You never learn to appreciate what you have because you are so focused on what must be better that you have not yet obtained.

And throughout our marriage, I realize now, he depended on me so much to provide the happiness for him, to validate him, to give him his worth, etc.  And he was quick to criticize when I fell short - something that was bound to happen often because those are not the kinds of things a partner can provide for you.

So he's now out there looking for his next shiny object wondering if this time his infatuation will be returned, thinking that maybe another woman can do a better job providing all those things for him that he really needs to learn to provide for himself.

To be honest, I feel a deep sense of sadness.  I grew to truly love this man and the last thing I want is for him to live a miserable, unhappy life because he is always chasing happiness instead of creating it from within.  And I fear he will never learn how to self-reflect in a way that helps him understand how he is sabotaging what could be a chance at real happiness.

Lessons from my first solo trip as a single person

I am in the last few hours of my train ride home after being gone the last 12 days of traveling.  I visited New York City, took a cruise to Bermuda, and visited Washington DC plus had hours of time to think on the train rides and the sea days out to Bermuda.  To be honest, every day of this divorce journey process seems transformative but that feels to be even more true of this trip.  Let me share some of the lessons I learned.

You have to sit with the uncomfortable feelings long enough so they no longer have as much power.  Unplugging on the sea days with no connection to the outside world was so hard.  I was lonely.  I felt isolated.  Such a variety of emotions flooded over me that it was overwhelming at times.  But I think not having many internet minutes was a blessing in disguise because it forced me to sit with those feelings.  I think by the end of the last sea day, they were starting to hold just a little less power, although I still have a ways to go on this.

Nature and connections heal us.  The more you can slow down and connect with the world around you, the better you can gain perspective and find some healing.  I spent so much time on this trip writing and reflecting.  And I used art, sunrises and sunsets, the motion of the train, flowers, the waves, etc. all as inspiration to mediate on, reflect on, find symbolism in, and write about.  I think this was the most important thing I did all trip.  So take the time to stop, be fully present, find a comfortable park bench or chair, and really connect with something around you that speaks to you.

I need to reassess my relationship with my phone and social media.  It is getting in the way of focusing on the things that would be so much better for me, like reading more and focusing on the world around me more.

Face your fears.  I'm a 42 year old woman who has never lived alone before.  I don't honestly know how to live a single life.  I mean I understand all the practical aspects of it.  I get the responsibility.  But having the emotional tools to find happiness in that is completely foreign to me as is depending on a larger social network.  So this is all really scary.  I'm finding though that my fears get a little smaller each time I face them.  So I'm actively putting myself out there to do things (both small and big) that scare me a bit to lessen those fears.  This trip I explored a foreign country completely on my own - navigating a ferry system, figuring out where I wanted to go, interacting with locals, etc.  And the small fear I faced was walking over grates (as you saw in my last post).

A solo trip is your chance to try new things and learn what you like and what you don't like.  I leaned into art far more than I have in the past and really enjoyed that.  I need to lean more into that interest.  And I confirmed that photographing flowers really is a happy place for me.  That is an interest I don't want to let go of.  On the other end of the spectrum, I'm not sure how much I like solo cruising, at least at this stage in my journey.  Maybe someday that will change again, but right now I'm going to stick to either cruising with other people or finding other ways to travel.  

I'm sure these aren't the only things that I'm taking with me from this trip but I thought I would share some of my initial thoughts and reflections.

Walking Over Grates

I have always had a bit of fear of walking over a grate and so avoided them whenever possible.  My husband generally humored me but I always wondered if he just found me a bit silly.

Upon arriving in New York City last week, I was confronted with grates everywhere.  With a subway system under the city, they just can't easily be avoided.  So I thought to myself "what I am really fearing here?"  And I started thinking about fears of the uncertainty of my future as the only life I know has been shattered.  

Why do we let fear get in our way of living?  Fear doesn't stop the future from coming.  It just stops us from being able to truly live and be present in that future.

So I vowed to stop avoiding grates.  And with each grate I encountered and boldly walked over, my fearlessness started to rise.  Not at all unlike the experience I have been having in putting myself out there socially.  With each experience and connection I make, I feel just a bit more fearless.

Maybe the key to not only surviving this but thriving from this is to keep facing my fears and moving through them.  

So now that I am in Washington DC which also isn't lacking in grates, I now fearlessly cross each grate I encounter.

When this process is over, I'm not sure I'm going to recognize myself - I already feel quite a bit foreign when I look in the mirror.  I'm not sure my soon-to-be ex-husband would recognize me either.

Finding Identity in Gender Roles

So I’m reading The Dance of the Dissident Daughter by Sue Monk Kidd. And with so much time to read, write and stare at the sea right now, it’s sitting with me a bit more deeply than it might if I was reading it in the middle of the chaos of life in general.

This book really talks about the identity that women find in the roles they live out (wife, mother, daughter) based on patriarchal values ingrained in our society. These roles are often defined by men and through thousands of years have demoted women and the roles they play to lesser roles. It really stuck with me the comparison to the environment. We view Mother Nature and our Earth as feminine which may have been at the root of how easily we destroyed her and were careless with her.

So how does this all relate to me and my divorce journey? I saw myself as someone with a good sense of self independent of being a wife or daughter. I think it has always been there to a degree instilled in my through my family values but I think I also really grew into it as I matured especially in my thirties. And I think my husband saw that strong sense of self especially as it grew stronger in the last decade and felt threatened by it.

As our marriage was breaking up, he made some comments that really made me question his views on gender and gender roles. I don’t think he is outright sexist or a misogynist but I do think he has some internalized values about gender that he may not even be fully conscious of.

Fast forward to today as I find myself in solitude with so much time to think, read, and write, and I find myself questioning my identity and how much of it was founded on my role as wife. Just because outwardly I felt a strong sense of self independently does not mean I too don’t have internalized values about gender that I am or at least was not fully conscious of. Unwrapping the intricacies of the drastic changes that come with the dissolution of a long-term marriage that covered essentially my entire adult life has shattered so many assumptions I had about myself in ways I still don’t really understand.

How would this have been different if I also carried the role of mother? The others in my divorce support group are all mothers and they all talk about how they are able to pour their attention and energy into their children, especially those with young children, as a distraction to dissolution of their marriages. Without that distraction and that continuing female role to lean on for identity am I being pushed into identity crisis faster?

How much am I leaning back on the role as daughter as I flounder in this time of uncertainty? I think it helps that my parents are many states away so I can’t easily run to their physical presence. I also think it helps the values they instilled in me early of independence even as a woman. But I still lean on them. And I’m anxious to get back to the last name that represents my relationship as daughter to them. Although the last name conundrum is really a challenge for women - which male’s last name do you want to claim as your own? Your father’s or your husband’s?

Traveling Solo

My cell phone functions as a camera
and nothing much more.
The airplane symbol displays.
I am far, far out at sea.
Nothing can be seen on the horizon.
The solitude threatens to overwhelm.

My body rolls and sways
as the waves push against the ship.
Ship technology a moderating influence
still leaves it at the mercy
of the moods of the ocean,
as I am to life’s uncertainties.

One last coup of coffee in my hands,
I stare out at the deep blue sea.
I surrender to the motion,
acknowledging that which I cannot see
far beyond the visible horizon.
I breathe in and out.


I’m traveling solo for the first time since the separation. This solo trip is quite different than past ones where I was still in constant contact with my husband and could still share the experience with him virtually. He was always a text or phone call away. This time it truly is just me. Maybe some day that will feel freeing. There are some great advantages to traveling solo. But right now it just feels isolating. And maybe a cruise to such an isolated, far away island, Bermuda with very limited internet wasn’t a best first choice. Or maybe forcing me to face the solitude is exactly what I need right now in my healing journey despite how incredibly hard it is.

I talk a big talk

I feel like I talk a big talk.  I know what I need to be telling myself to heal and what I need to be doing so I say it out loud, repeatedly.  People tell me how strong I am or how impressed they are with how I'm coping.  But I don't always feel inside the words I say.

The quiet part inside of me is just crying "why?"  The fears and uncertainties loom large.  The silence at the dinner table seems so loud.

And constantly stepping into these fears is just exhausting and overwhelming.  I keep moving forward.  I keep doing all the right things but I am just so tired.

I took the overnight train to New York City this week and talk about sensory overload when I stepped out from the train station!  I've traveled big cities before and never felt anything like this wash over me.  At first I thought maybe it's just New York City and a different vibe but I wonder if it is just this exhausting, overwhelmed system of mine not able to cope as well as it normally would.  And maybe the culmination of doing things that frighten me on almost a daily basis these past few months.

So on the outside I might look like an incredibly brave, strong woman but inside I really just want to crawl up in a ball and hide from the world.  I may say all the right things about learning to be my own best friend, reveling in me and who I am, but if I'm honest, I'd really rather turn back time, un-know all I know now, and do all this beside the person I thought was my best friend and husband.

Turning it off like a faucet

It feels so foreign how my marriage seemed to get turned off like a faucet, no gradual decline, just a switch where in one moment it felt good and in the next it was gone.   One day we were exchanging "I love you"s, "Good morning"s and "Good night"s and the next day nothing.  I am struggling with that all or nothing pivot.  And I'm struggling to make sense from his end.  Was there a gradual decline for him and he kept up all the words and actions to try and convince himself otherwise?  Or because he selfishly feared my response to the truth?  Is he feeling any of the same whiplash I am feeling?  Even if he was pretending for some time, it still is a pretty stark switch.

Or was he never really all that invested and just going through the motions?  Or maybe he has just been floating through life in general without purpose or intention such that he wasn't so invested in anything.

I've always known my husband struggled more in life than I did and he never got the amazing help I got from a therapist when we were still living in the midwest.  He struggled with communication.  He struggled with dealing with conflict.  I knew he had some struggles with self-worth.  Much of it stemmed from his childhood.  Honestly, it's such a common story.  I suspect we all walk away from childhood with wounds to some degree that we need to work through as adults.  And I knew he hadn't done the work to deal with those wounds although I did see some growth in how he related to his mom (which didn't please her and I got the blame for - she wanted to keep him in unhealthy dynamics).

But I never expected him to put the blame for all that on our marriage, on me.  I never expected him to walk away from the one relationship where he actually had support and acceptance.

I wonder how his visit with his mom is going.  I wonder if he thinks of me at all or if he has found a way to turn it off completely.  Avoidance is his strong suit.

Our bodies hold stress

I have been fascinated and a bit horrified at how the stress of this journey has affected my body in what feels like extreme ways.

As of last Friday, I have lost 23 pounds since mid-May.  I'm really enjoying how I look and the clothes I fit into but stress isn't the way I wanted to lose weight.

My appetite is still not back.  In the beginning, I was nausea enough that I called it an accomplishment if I managed to eat something once a day.  Now, I'm getting in at least 2 meals a day, sometimes three although without much snacking at all and my meals are much smaller than they once were.  This has had the advantage that since I'm not enjoying food and not eating as much I'm focusing on healthier foods for the little food I do eat and so I have had very little heartburn for a change.

I think I took almost 4 months off from alcohol completely which even now that I have had a few drinks has significantly changed my relationship with alcohol.  I guess this is for the better in the long run as well.

My sleep has been off since mid-May.  That's about five months of poor to mediocre sleep which has been rough for someone who usually sleeps pretty well.  This has been a huge negative and being physically exhausted makes it harder to deal with emotional exhaustion.

My resting heartbeat jumped up all summer and just this month (specifically the last 8 days) has made a significant drop.  Interestingly the drop happened the day after I handed over my keys to the old apartment.

My menstrual cycle has gotten shorter and lighter.  I don't know what that means for my hormones.  Or maybe it's the start of perimenopause.  I don't know.

I'm still battling foot pain and pain in my lower back and hips.  So there really hasn't been much of a change there.  The back and hip pain started a couple years into my marriage so there is this thought in the back of my head wondering if stress from the marriage that I wasn't really aware of has been the cause of that pain.  Doctors have not been successful in finding the cause so I wonder about unseen causes like stress.

Time will tell how my body settles down as I become more confident in this next chapter of my life and this new version of myself.

Water Lantern Festival

I participated in a water lantern festival at a local park today with one of my close friends and her children.  They gave us a paper water lantern for us to draw and write on suggesting messages of hope, healing, love, connection, etc.  And then after dark, we released our lanterns into the pond and watched them float away.  I went hoping to find a sliver of healing and I think I did.  I also went to wrap myself in the love of the others around me which I definitely did.  It really was a special evening.  

Here are the Haikus I wrote on my water lantern.  My theme was loss which leads to finding strength in myself to endure the dark of night until the sun rises and brings hope.  Feeling so connected to nature, the waves of the sea, a tree, and sunrise are my metaphors.

sand, shells, salt water
slip through my fingers freely
waves retreat to sea

roots, branches, and limbs
stretch as deep as wide as high
weathered, worn, yet stands

black of night transforms
first blue, then golden red
my eyes see anew

Saturday ramblings

I was never going to be enough in helping him regulate his own emotions so he is running to spend time with the woman (his mom) who can't regulate her own emotions.  The irony.

I envy the freedom he has to go telework in other places to be able to spend time with his family, a luxury my job does not give me.

Maybe that is why being alone in my apartment is bothering me today.  I'm restless.  I'm lonely.  The hours until the water lantern festival this evening are passing slowly.  

And a glitch in the Delta app has been sending me notifications about his bag being loaded on and off the planes.  I'm not logged in as him so I don't know why I'm getting those notifications.  It's like the ChargePoint app notifications about his car being charged earlier this week.  I have since created my own account and am not logged in as him anymore yet still get the notifications.  My phone doesn't want me to forget him, as if that is possible at this point.

Sometimes it's not until the end of a relationship that you truly realize the role you played.  Twice now since the day we got the keys to our separate apartments has he come to me with a bit of panic at something not having gone quite right - both times I suspect were due to his own error.  In the past, they were things I would have just handled, calmly.  I wouldn't have stressed.  I just would have solved them.  He eventually solved them on his own but not without the stress.  Was I the calming influence like his dad was so often to his mom?  Or will I have my own struggles I face at some point of things he would have handled where I will panic like he did?

Part of me suspects that I am better equipped to handle living alone than he is but if that is the case, it really worries me because I'm dealing with plenty of my own struggles.  I don't wish him worse.  A visit home to mom though this close after moving out probably won't help.  I'm not saying he is not capable.  I just think he depended on me for more than he thinks he did.

I chuckled yesterday as I swept my floors and thought about the dishes I've kept up on and the reusable zip lock bags I have cleaned promptly.  He always judged my housekeeping.  I really think he expected me to fail on all that.

I've started ruminating again this weekend, trying to sort out in my mind exactly what happened, why it happened, and why now so quickly.  I'm starting to wonder if my over-analysis is depending too much on assumptions and theories (because of my lack of actual facts) such that I'm completely missing the truth.  I guess it is fitting.  It falls right into the whole issue of not knowing what is real and what is not.  I need to find a way to accept that I'm not ever going to get the answers I seek.

Well, this evening is a water lantern festival.  I have my Haikus written that I plan to put on my lantern representing loss, strength, and hope.  Releasing those messages into the water I hope will be one step on the process of healing.

Security of a marriage

My marriage kept me in a safe place without a lot of desire to venture out.  As an introvert, it felt really comfortable and nice.  I didn't have to put myself out there if I didn't want to.  I could stay home and enjoy the companionship of my husband.

But with that security and safety, I was too sheltered.  I didn't grow in ways I should have.  I didn't develop other relationships that are vital to a whole life.

And now..... I'm scared shitless as a woman in my 40s trying to navigate that world on my own and put myself out there over and over again.  I am so incredibly proud of what I have done in the last few months but the fear each time doesn't go away.

A few weeks back I signed up for a Life Group at church.  This is a group of 4-6 people that they put together for the purposes of getting to know each other, meeting regularly, and supporting each other in our life and faith journeys.  To be randomly put with 5 other people I likely don't know is something I would have completely avoided in my earlier life.  But I believed it was what I needed now at this phase in my life so I signed up.

Well, today the e-mail came - a list of the people who have been put in a group with me.  There is one name on that list I recognize although I don't really know her very well at all.  The other four I don't recognize at all.  The anxiety and fear is a bit overwhelming.  Several times I've started an e-mail to reach out to all of them but erased all my words.  I won't let this hang past tomorrow but I think I just need to go to bed tonight.

Life is too short to avoid all the things that scare us but I think it's okay to take this at my own pace.

I took my ring off on Monday

After I signed the divorce documents, I knew I had to get out and walk to clear my mind so I headed to the local park.  As I walked, I realized that now felt like the time to take off my ring.  It felt like an important part of letting him go.  So I eyed up the bench I had claimed as my therapy bench which unfortunately was occupied so I made a few laps as I knew the walking would be good for me too.  Then I sat down on a bench with a sightline of my bench.  

I debated how long I should wait to see if they vacate my bench and whether it would feel right to use a substitute bench for something that felt so momentous.  Fortunately, before I could answer those questions, the couple on the bench moved on so I claimed my space.

The sun was getting close to the horizon behind the clouds.  The two ducks could be seen on the other side of the pond. There was a man who had set up a canvas propped up by his skateboard that was working on a portrait of someone.  The temperatures were comfortable - I hadn't changed out of my work pants and blouse.  And in that moment as I sat crossed legged on the bench, I took the ring off and set it on my knee and took some time to just exist in that space, mindset, and finality of the chapter.

Surprisingly no tears came.  I don't even know how to describe the complex feelings inside of me.

Finding peace

Last night was the second night in a row where I actually slept.  I think I slept continuously from about 9:30 p.m. until after 4 a.m. (and then went back to sleep for a bit more).  The night before I only woke up twice and was able to fall back asleep pretty quickly each time.

Maybe I'm finding some peace with signing the divorce documents and re-setting my mindset.

What if staying with me was too much of a crutch that it interfered with my husband's ability to deal with whatever internal struggles he is facing?  What if it really had nothing to do with me personally and everything to do with him needing to face this alone?

If that is the case, the greatest gift I could give him was to let go.

Moments that stick with you

There are just some moments in time that are so powerful they etch themselves on your heart and mind, never to be forgotten.  I had one of those moments this past weekend as we cleaned out the apartment.  It is still so vivid in my mind so I spent some time yesterday writing a poem about it that I will share here.

cold tile beneath me
warm tears caress my cheeks
drawers and cabinets
haphazardly open or closed
a weight is heavy on my shoulders
as I hurriedly sort
mine......his.......trash.

dark clouds under my eyes
give away sleepless nights
leaning my collapsed body
against the hard corner
of the door frame
I pause
as the tears flow freely