He bought another car.

It appears he bought a car this past weekend.  He couldn't have had the last one more than about 3 months.  And as a couple, we bought him one exactly a year ago yesterday.  That's three cars in twelve months.  

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that divorcing me might not have actually solved his unhappiness like he thought it would.  People who are happy don't generally need a huge dopamine hit from an external source like this so frequently, especially such a costly one in a such an uncertain economy (and with uncertainty in his job).

A conversation keeps repeating in my head.  As we were separating, we talked about his car purchases and how I would try to slow him down. By the end, he was trading them in about every 6 months.  In this conversation, he told me that my pushback just made him want to buy more cars and that he would have bought less cars if I would have said yes without question to each purchase.

Although I suspected it from the moment his words left his mouth, now I know for sure that was just a line to shift blame to me.  We've only been divorced just over five months and he has already purchased two without my influence.  He wouldn't have bought less if I had been more agreeable, he would have bought more.

There's so many mixed feelings running through me.  First it was laugher.  I think I laughed the entire mile walk home.  Now that I'm on the outside, I see how incredibly absurd it is.  I know my parents used to shake their heads at us.  I used to laugh it off saying there are worse things he could spend his money on (like drugs or alcohol).  Although maybe I was a bit too dismissive of the consequences.

Then there was a feeling of relief.  I didn't have to waste energy trying to push back because this obsession of his no longer actually affects me.  I didn't have to sit through the transaction.  I won't have to make a trip to the courthouse to get the tags transferred.  I won't have to reach out to our insurance agent about the change.  And it's not my money anymore.  He's not my husband anymore.  Any consequences of this will fall solely on his shoulders.

And finally, there is a feeling of sadness.  I had really hoped that some good would come out of this divorce for him.  I had hoped this would give him the push he needed to really work on himself and learn how to authentically find happiness not from external things but from within.  

He's never actually going to know real happiness, is he?

Unsettled

I feel really off today.  Maybe it's because I'm not sleeping all that well - my racing mind keeps me up.  Or maybe there was something triggering about today's sermon on the parable of the lost sheep - my eyes may have watered a bit towards the end.  Or maybe it's hormones - my period's off, it's been a bit off since early last summer, probably the start of perimenopause - I should really schedule that visit with a gynecologist I've been putting off.  Or maybe this sone of the moments where I just feel really alone.  

Even putting on one of my new favorite dresses this morning didn't lift my mood.

I've been here before.  This isn't the first day I've had where everything just feels off and I'm a bit depressed.  And so I know it doesn't last and I know how to move through it.

I spent some time curled up on my bed under one of my Grandma's quilts with the fresh air blowing in as I listened to a really good audiobook, Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt.  And I called my parents.  Hearing their voices is always a comfort.

And when none of that quite did the trick, I fell back on a habit I have developed that has seen me through so much.  I forced myself to put my shoes (sandals) on (this is the hardest part), stepped outside, and let my feet do the work.  I walked the length of my favorite park and continued on a trail further where I founded deep purple bearded irises blooming and didn't stop until I made it to the butterfly table sculpture that always makes me pause and remember how interconnected we are to this entire world.

Then on my way back through my favorite park, I found someone seated on my therapy bench so I found a close enough substitute to sit and observe the world around me as I finished the poem I had started in my head.

Her long, flowing blue dress

swirls in the wind

as she puts one foot

in front of the other.

The laughter of two on bikes

brings her back to today.

Her ring finger feels as naked

as the empty space beside her.

Her body remembers

what her mind cannot.

So as the wind continues to blow

with each step she takes,

her mind disappears back

to a time that feels so distant.

The unsettled feelings aren't completely gone but there is a peace there that was not present earlier this day.

Guilt-free Downtown Living

I was walking back from the grocery store this morning, with a cart full of fresh veggies, herbs to plant in the pots on my balcony, a rotisserie chicken for lunch, and some of my favorite foods, when I reflected on the pure joy in the experience and the lack of any feelings of guilt.

I don't think my ex-husband liked living downtown.  I think he initially agreed to it because I showed him how financially it could make sense (rent may be higher but there are cost savings to being right downtown) and then shortly after we moved here, his office moved from the suburbs to downtown within short walking distance of our apartment.

I know he hated the noise.  I suspect he worried about his car being parked next to others in a full parking ramp.  And with every mitigation move we made (moving to interior top floor apartments, installing blackout curtains, parking on the top level, etc.), I worried he would finally say "enough" and push to move to the suburbs.  So there was this underlying guilt mixed in with my joy of being downtown.

But with him gone, the guilt is gone.  I get to just live in the middle of all this life.  I get to walk and scooter far more than I drive - I actually only get in my car for fun stuff like a vacation, a day trip or to go visit a friend in the suburbs.

And as I think about what's next for my career, moving into an investigator role or switching to the private sector if I sadly lose my job, I dream of what it would be like to live in an even bigger city with good transit where maybe I could ditch the car completely.  That's a dream I never dared to dream before.

If I truly am a person with a secure attachment, why did I stay so long?

The more I process and the more I realize how toxic the dynamic was, the more I question why I didn't see it and why I tolerated it and even why I felt so blindsided.  If my eyes had been open, I would have anticipated some sort of outcome like this, although preferably a kinder end to the relationship.

Maybe it goes back to the spectrum and gray area I talked about with my therapist last session.  People likely aren't 100% one attachment style.

I received consistent love and care from my parents growing up.  They may have struggled at times to meet my emotional needs being such analytical people themselves but I never doubted their love or support.  I never worried they would abandon me.  I always knew they would find a way to help me when I needed help.  

And they really raised me to become independent encouraging me to step out on my own but always being in the wings in case I faltered.  They will freely give me advice but only if I ask for it.  They trust I can figure things out on my own and that I will know when to ask for help.

And they are incredibly authentic people who through example encouraged me to embrace me and worry less about what society expects of me.

To contrast that, I had a pretty horrible experience with my peers.  I had medical problems as a child that made me a prime target for bullying.  And my parents encouraging me to embrace my uniqueness didn't always help me fit in - just ask my sister about the giant sombrero on hat day in high school that I think mortified her.

I still found some close friends but they were each only around for a season and often didn't leave on good terms.  My first best friend suddenly started hating me when her parents went through a divorce in fifth grade.  I don't honestly believe she hated me - I was just the outlet for her anger at the situation but it nevertheless ended our friendship.  My second best friend stopped talking to me when I disclosed I was not straight.  She had already told me I was going to hell because I was Lutheran and not Catholic, being bisexual crossed a whole other line.

My close college friendships from freshman year just seemed to vanish into thin air when I came back from a semester abroad.

I was really fortunate at how much my home life could balance and be a safe space from my school life.  I think it helped me keep things in perspective and build resilience. But there probably still is a bit of an unconscious fear of abandonment.  And I think that came out when my ex-husband and I went through our first bumpy patch in 2016 or 2017.  And maybe I've realized some growth since then such that it didn't come out as strongly last summer when it finally ended.

I also wonder if some of the growth I experienced over the last 5-10 years made me start to push back more against toxic behaviors.  I think it happened so gradually that I didn't even notice it until I reflect in hindsight now.  I had started to try and find ways to speak up when his complaining had gone on so long it was draining me.  I had started to speak up about the unfair way he was demanding validation in the moment for his aggressive driving that was making me feel unsafe.  I had started to set and enforce clearer boundaries with his mom.  Maybe my growth created a shift in the relationship that he was no longer comfortable with.

When I look back at yesterday's posts and the ways I got tired of certain behaviors and maybe started to like him less, I think that shift only happened in the last 5 or so years.  So maybe I wasn't always as secure as I feel today.

Did I actually like him?

My therapist this week asked whether I liked him.  She understood I loved him but did I like him?  I was taken aback by the question.  I liked seeing him.  I liked spending time with him.  I liked talking with him.  There were many things about him that I liked.  So why was there a pause before I stumbled through an answer?  Why do I even now feel the answer I gave was inadequate or incomplete such that it still tumbles through my mind?

The first things that comes to mind when I reflect on whether I liked him are the times I reassured him that I did indeed like him.  The specific contexts of those conversations alludes me right now but I remember it coming up enough times over the years that the reassurances I gave really stick with me.  In the moment, I believed in my reassurances but is that because I repeated it enough times that I convinced myself of its truth?  

What if I had slowly over time come to like him less and less but had convinced myself otherwise with how often I repeated the reassurances he regularly needed?  Or maybe my loyalty and strive to find the good in people blinded me?

If I'm truly honest, I was exasperated with how often the smallest thing going wrong would signify the whole world must be against him.  I was uncomfortable with his attitude of entitlement that was so often fed by his mom.  I was tired from my attempts to validate him never being enough.  I felt empty from the lack of deep conversations.  I had gotten to the point where for my own sanity I was distancing myself from his constant negativity.  I had started to give up on any hope that there was some magical way I could phrase things that wouldn't result in him taking offense and getting defensive.

But I was too busy focusing on him, giving him the benefit of the doubt, trying to help him manage his feelings, trying to keep our marriage together to have time to notice my own feelings.

The more I unravel, the more I see the ways I set aside my own feelings and thoughts to focus on reassuring him, making space for his feelings, and trying to manage his feelings.  It's like my first dilemma upon moving out - was I truly adverse to noise or did I just not like listening to his complaints about noise?  I didn't actually know the answer to that question until I moved into my own studio that faces both a brewery and very active train tracks.  

Maybe this is just one more example of how my energy and focus on him distracted me from myself.  

Ultimately though, whether or not I liked him isn't something that happened in isolation.  It's a by product of the energy that was and was not put into the relationship.  It's the result of that imbalance.  It's completely missing the mark on what a partnership is supposed to be.

My takeaway from this - stop pouring more energy into people than the energy they are willing to pour into me.  

The gray area between the black and white

I work with someone who has been very vocal about her support of this administration and can't seem to see the destruction and damage the administration is doing.  In addition to the damage to our government and the economy, this is an administration that is attacking the humanity of so many non-straight, white male groups.  The division this has created is immense and seems insurmountable.  

Yet, yesterday, she and another colleague who I also think generally supports this administration were the ones to take the time to clean out a colleagues belongings left at the office since she has been sick, deliver them to her, and visit with her.  No one else volunteered to do that great kindness.

It was a really good reminder of the complexities of people and the importance of recognizing the gray in a world that too often seems black and white.

I was talking to a friend at work about this yesterday and she pointed out the way I see the gray in the end of my relationship with my now ex-husband.  My therapist touched on this last night as well as we talked more about the spectrum that life falls on and the ability to hold two truths at once.

The way my ex-husband discarded me was a pretty horrible way to handle things.  But it doesn't negate the good life we lived together.  It doesn't negate the many good memories we made.  And even when I think about how it all ended, I can acknowledge the challenges he faced that seem to stem back to his childhood and feel empathy for his struggles at the same time I recognize he had a responsibility as an adult to do the work to overcome those challenges so he didn't cause harm to others.

And then when I look at myself and what I have been through, I can fully grieve the pain and acknowledge how unfair it was to me while at the same time marvel at the growth I have experienced and all I have learned because of the pain.  This divorce doesn't have to be all bad or all good for me.  It can be both.  It can represent my darkest days and my capacity for tapping into my greatest joys even on those darkest days. 

Cars and Material Possessions

At choir practice tonight, we rehearsed the anthem we will sing Easter Sunday. Supposedly we sang it last Easter as well but it didn't sound familiar to me.  Curious where I was last Easter because I didn't think our cruise would have included Easter (we usually avoided holidays) and I thought I was around the rest of the spring, so I pulled up my calendar.

We were in Nashville.  We bought a car on the Saturday before Easter (March 30).  My ex-husband then spent most of the rest of the day detailing it in the parking garage of the hotel where we stayed while I enjoyed the rooftop terrace by myself.  We did take the time to enjoy Cheekwood in Bloom with all their tulips on Easter Sunday before going home so at least that was a bright spot of the weekend.  

It's weird though, I don't have any blog posts of the weekend in my travel blog.  I usually blogged about weekend trips.  Why did I not find it significant enough to blog about?

Thinking about the time he spent detailing the car at the hotel, reminds me of the bucket that sits in my coat closet.  It contains unopened bottles of bug remover, wax, RainX and maybe something else plus a still sealed sponge and maybe some cloths.  I moved out 6 months ago but I haven't used it.  There's a full page typed document he air dropped me last summer about how to care for my car that I haven't looked at really either.

He worried more about how I would take care of the car than how I would take care of myself.  I remember thinking that at the time even.  He was so focused on our material possessions and not at all focused on the harm he was causing me or the challenges I would face as a solo woman.  I think I had accepted that then already.  I think I had known it on some level all along.

I sit here as I turn these puzzle pieces over and over in my head with a sense of detachment.  It just is what it is.  I can't go back and change it.  I don't regret where life has taken me.  I've made use of every challenge I've faced to grow.  And my marriage was one of those challenges.

And when I look back at my life and all the decisions I've made, I've made lots of mistakes.  I tolerated things I shouldn't have tolerated.  It took some time to work on my communication skills.  But I have lived my life with integrity.  I feel good about the way I showed up.  I feel good about the way I have used self-reflection (and continue to do so) to grow and constantly strive to do better.

So a memory like this might make me pause.  And it definitely makes me a bit sad for the woman I was in that marriage.  But it's also a reminder of the strength inside of me and the integrity with which I face this world.

I didn’t have much fight left in me.

I think about how fast it ended.  And at first my focus was on how quickly he could just discard me. But there’s a second piece to how quickly it ended. If I’m truly honest, I played a not so insignificant role. 

There was about 6 weeks during the first half of the summer where I kind of tried to hang on.  But early on in those six weeks I was realizing how little he was trying and how much he had allowed a negative cloud to distort his perceptions of me and our relationship and how little he was willing to reflect on the accuracy of those perceptions. 

So that night in mid-July, before he left for a two-week visit with his mind, I knew my fight was gone. I was done tolerating the way he was just stringing me along. My heart was breaking as I told him he either needed to sincerely work on the relationship or move on - that he couldn’t keep stringing me along. In that moment, if he had picked up the fight maybe I would have eventually found mine again. I wasn’t truly ready for it to end. I just knew that I couldn’t carry us alone anymore. 

So after I dropped him off at the airport that next morning, I started making my own plans. I moved out of the marital bedroom. I downloaded financial statements and asked him for copies of what I couldn’t access. I started to budget for myself. I started to think about how to divide things. I talked to an attorney so I knew my rights. 

When we ran into issues with how to value certain assets, I did the research to come up with a plan and by mid-August, we had sat down together and come to an agreement that only needed the review and drafting by our attorneys.  At one point, he asked me to help find an attorney we could use together. That’s the only thing I wouldn’t do. He had to find his own attorney and if he wanted this divorce, he had to file it. 

I made it easy for him. Because I had lost my fight. I was tired of trying to convince someone of my worth who refused to see it. Maybe I wasn’t so afraid to lose him anymore. 

I think back to how different this time was from the previous time we almost separated. It was in maybe 2016 or 2017.  He had developed an unrequited crush on his boss. We went through couples counseling then. I felt a desperation then that I didn’t feel this time. I was so afraid of losing him that I would do just about anything. In hindsight, I now realize that our counseling sessions were only focused on me and my faults with no reflection on his role in the dynamics.  And I think it was as things were unfolding last summer that I truly understood that. 

Even this last time, I would have worked things out with him but I wasn’t going to do it in a one-sided way. I knew I was worth more than that. Any effort I put in to our relationship at that point going forward was only going to be to match the energy he was putting in. 

And since he was willing to put exactly zero into the relationship, it disintegrated quickly. 

So maybe the speed at which it all happened speaks more to my growth than it does to his distance and immature discard. 

I don't know if I need that final conversation anymore.

Fully understanding it is not linear, have I stepped into a new phase of healing?  I have spent months wishing I could have one more conversation as if I would get some closure from a final conversation.  The content of that conversation in my head has shifted as I processed through my emotions.  My optimism about how helpful it would be has also significantly shifted over the months.

But as I walked home from work today, the conversation went differently in my head.  (We all replay and create conversations in our head with the people in our lives, right?  I'm not the only one who processes this way, am I?)

Anyway, today's conversation was as if I had run into him and he had initiated the conversation.  He really wanted to remain friends as we split, so I wouldn't put it past him to approach me someday.  In today's conversation (all in my head), I was quiet.  I didn't want to explain myself anymore.  I didn't see any value in telling him how he hurt me.  I had nothing left to say to him.

I think something shifted in me when I realized how low of a priority I was to him going back a lot of years.  And it really tracks with something he said as we were splitting.  He believes love is a feeling not an action or a choice.  Love without any action or choice is fleeting.  It can't last.  It's most likely just infatuation.  And it may have even worn off before we even got married.  With only one of us choosing love, our marriage didn't stand a chance.

I don't think there is any explanation that he can give that would change that fact.  He didn't ever truly choose me.  He may have said yes to a marriage proposal and yes to our vows but he didn't choose love and put that love into action by investing in our marriage.  I don't need another conversation to watch him demonstrate once again that he didn't choose me.

Who was he?

As I sit back and think of all the ways I felt we were aligned, values, interests, goals, etc. and then consider how much he clearly kept from me, it makes me wonder which things were authentic and which things were him just going along with something he didn't actually agree with.  How often did he let the mask slip so that I could get a glimpse of who he really was?

In the end, he said we weren't compatible but he couldn't elaborate in what way.  Was that just an excuse to get out because he wanted freedom or were there things that no longer or maybe never did resonate with him that he kept quiet about?

It's interesting to think about how we present ourselves in relationships and how well we let people truly get to know us and the flip side of that in how well we truly know those we are in relationships with.  Are we just strangers living parallel lives?  Or are we exchanging bits and pieces of ourselves to grow and find ways to interconnect with the world?

On a side note, in hindsight, he was right that we are incompatible, at least in one way - energy.  We weren't both pouring energy into the relationship in any balanced way.

Dating

I wish I had a close girl friend who I could share everything with.  The friend I feel most comfortable with is too busy and dealing with so many of her own challenges.  And the rest are too new to have that comfort level with yet and may not even turn out to be people I want to be close to.  (I'm feeling a bit of that with one right now.)

So I'm left to deal with so many of my thoughts alone and talking about dating is one of those things.  So here I am typing out things in a public blog (that really no one reads) that I have yet to say out loud.  

I don't have any interest in dating or so I keep telling myself.  The thought of starting over with someone new after two decades is incredibly intimidating and doesn't seem worth the risk.  I wasn't all that into dating when I was young.  It was just one of those things that happened by chance a couple of times before I met my now ex-husband.  I wasn't looking for someone.  I didn't have dreams of marriage or a family or anything like that.

It probably doesn't help that I initially joined a Facebook group where women warn other women about men who are unsafe.  (I've since unfollowed that group.)

It also doesn't help how many divorced women I speak to of my age and older who have given up on the dating scene because of the lack of quality single men.

And it doesn't help that my ex-husband seemed like one of the good guys.  My journal entries don't show any concerning behaviors from him until after I had proposed and we had moved in together and even those concerning behaviors seemed minor enough to be easily dismissed especially early in a romance.  So there is a fear that I could fall for another person who puts on a good show in the beginning that doesn't last.

So my focus since the separation has been on me and building a life that I could be happy with as a solo person.

So I'm a bit taken aback by my first crush.  I really don't think I'm ready to date again.  And I'm not sure this is even a man I want to date for reasons I won't get into in this blog.  So I don't know what to do with these feelings.  But if I told you my heart didn't skip a beat when I just watched him walk from the business across the street to his car that was parked outside my window just now, I would be lying.

I feel like people are waiting for me to get truly pissed at my ex.

Since this all started last summer, I have heard many comments from many people about the ways they would get revenge if they were me and about how I'm being too nice to him.  It's been so weird trying to figure out how to respond to comments like that.  I feel as if people want or at least expect me to be really angry at him and hate him.

Now I've had some moments of anger but they have more been directed at the situation or the circumstances.  Or when I dig deeper they have been a cover for the deep sadness and grief I feel.  But I don't hate him.  I'm not angry at him.  There is an underlying feeling of sadness for him in all my emotions.

Even recently in a conversation with my therapist where I was realizing how low of a priority I was to him, my therapist asked if in this moment of feeling betrayed whether I would react differently upon meeting him by chance than I had the last time I ran into him.  I don't actually know her intention but it felt like she was trying to draw out of me any anger I may feel.

But it's not there.  Making the connections and further understanding the depth of his betrayal doesn't bring out more anger.  It just makes me really sad.  It breaks my heart.

I think it comes down to the fact that I still generally trust my judgment.  Nothing I have learned through self-reflection has changed the fact that I still think he is a generally good person with good intentions.  I picked him two decades ago for many reasons that still exist today.  

I just don't think he has the capacity to love without putting in the time to heal from the toxic dynamics that started in his childhood.  I don't think he actually knows what healthy love is.  I think he gets in the way of his own happiness.

So no matter how conflicted I feel, I can't be angry at that.

I hurt today.

I’m sitting on the floor of my office on my lunch hour listening to the laughter from the Friday lunch time games down the hall trying to relieve pressure in my hips and lower back. I squirmed through the office presentation right before lunch that went long. And now a headache is forming. It’s been awhile since I’ve had a flare up like this. Maybe I’ll make some tea. 

Priorities

When I pushed through the anxiety and walked into that dealership yesterday after work, I thought I was just feeling unsure of myself doing this all by myself for the first time.  I didn't realize that my anxiety was likely stemmed in the ingrained negative memories I have of dealerships, my ex-husband, and what it represented in our marriage.

That visual I have in my head of laying on the car dealership showroom years ago stretching to try and relive some pain as the negotiations and paperwork to buy a car went on for hours is more than just a reminder of the physical pain.  It demonstrates how my ex-husband had more concern for the cars he was buying than he did for my comfort.  

I fell somewhere behind his cars, his mom, his job, his career ambitions, etc. when it came to his priorities.  And if I had been paying attention, I would have seen that more clearly in his actions instead of realizing it now in a way that feels such a huge betrayal.

I invested so much in a man who couldn't even bother to put me above material things.

And it's not even anger I feel.  It's this deep sadness that someone would go through life valuing material things over people who love them deeply.  And this grief for what we could have had if only.  And it's a feeling of loss of good memories that are now tainted by what I see now that I couldn't then.

The intersection of politics and my marriage - my car

I own a Tesla.  I wonder what response a statement like that will get in the future when I re-read this blog someday.  Elon Musk is currently the CEO and I believe owns enough shares to be the highest shareholder.  Musk is also leading DOGE, in his role appointed by our current president to dismantle our government, completely ignoring the checks and balances in our constitution.  I work for said government.  Our president participated in an ad for Tesla on the front lawn of the White House.  Musk at one point recently gave a Nazi salute.  A certain percentage of left-leaning people are calling for extreme boycotts.  They call Teslas Swasticars.  They are protesting at dealerships and vandalizing dealerships, chargers, and the cars of individual owners.  There was supposedly even briefly a website up with a map of all Tesla owners including names, addresses, phone numbers, social media accounts, etc.

I love the car itself.  The technology is amazing.  It's a fun car to drive.  And the charging network is leaps and bounds ahead of any other charging network.  I don't want to sell my car but there is some concern about insurance rates skyrocketing or denying coverage, although I don't feel like I have enough information to assess how big of a risk that is.  There's also concern that the company could go bankrupt and I don't yet know how extensive a network of service providers there are with knowledge on EVs.  And the car's value is dropping probably not as fast in my red state as other states but still dropping nonetheless.  I wouldn't worry about depreciation if there wasn't a concern about insurance costs or maintenance because I had planned to keep the car long enough that it won't be worth much in the end anyway.  

To be honest, I don't know what to do but I do know that gathering more information is never a bad thing.  So I scootered to the Hyundai dealership on my way home from work today.  The sales man who greeted me at the door didn't know what I was asking about when I gave him the model of the car until I explained it was an EV that I saw on their website.  So he proceeded to look it up and then ask someone where to find the car.

In the meantime, I sat in one of those black chairs that seems so common in dealerships and realized the smell is the same as the countless dealerships I have been in.  And it took me back to another time.  The anxiety I had felt walking in the door had not calmed down at all, it had escalated.

My ex-husband is obsessed with cars.  We had been through I believe over 25 during our two decades together.  It escalated as we became more secure in our jobs such that most cars weren't lasting more than 6-9 months by the end.  I can't even count the hours I've spent in dealerships and rarely were they positive moments.  There was a time in our marriage where I was dealing with significant chronic pain and the hours at the dealership were so hard on me.  I can remember laying on the floor of the showroom stretching to try and make it through.  

I remember writing a poem about negotiation and the salesman asking what I was writing - I openly admitted I was writing a poem about him which I think unnerved him a bit.  I should find that poem.  I remember the late fast food dinners because the paperwork took so long and being there until after closing.  And I remember the arguments when I tried to slow him down a bit when he pushed for the next car so soon after the previous.  I wasn't even saying "no".  I usually just wanted more information and more time process.  As we broke up, he told me he thinks my trying to slow him down actually made him want to buy more cars which I think helped me recognize the lack of empathy, something that was never there through all those transactions he put me through.

So I'm sitting in this black chair waiting for the salesman to return, angry at the fact that I'm being put in a position to make this decision about a car I love at the same time I'm reliving the pain and sacrifices I made for an ex-husband who I'm not sure even appreciated what I did let alone would have done the same for me.

And then the salesman came back with a story of someone who is going to make a decision about buying the car tomorrow and so he couldn't show it to me.  Then he said the car wasn't even there.  Then it was something about a woman waiting for her father's advice.  So he asked if he could call me tomorrow and took down my name and number.  It was only then that he gave me his card and so I learned his name.  And then I left.  He didn't try to sell me another car.  He didn't bother to ask about whether I would have a trade.  I don't think he actually wanted to sell me a car.

I got this. I am resourceful.

I miss having someone to talk through big decisions with who was equally invested in the outcome.  I can call my Mom or Dad or a close friend for advice but it's not actually their problem to solve or their decision to make and it is pretty limited in how much they will suffer the consequences of that decision.  And with my ex-husband there were areas each of us were strong in so we could lean on each other depending on the type of decision to be made.

So it is a bit scary all on my own.

I let social media get to me yesterday.  There's a lot of fear-mongering going on.  It was about something that potentially could significantly impact my finances - my car and my car insurance.  Do I sell a car that I love, is paid off, and costs me little to maintain and run just because of political dynamics?  When it was just about people judging me, I didn't care.  I wasn't going to let people pressure me into a bad financial decision.  But the latest fear driven posts are focused on my pocketbook.  

I won't lie.  I went to bed later than I should have last night because of it and didn't sleep very well.

So this afternoon, I called my independent insurance agent to get the pulse on the insurance industries response to these politics and the timing of my policy renewal.  She had heard nothing (despite the claims online) but she promised to pass along anything she hears.  And then we looked at my policy renewal date and the notice they would have to give for changes to coverage and when renewal rates usually come out (which should be any day now).  So she promised to let me know as soon as she found out what next term's premiums would be.  

It felt really good to talk it through with her and to put everything back into perspective.

I don't always have to do everything by myself.  In most cases, there are resources I can tap into when it comes to things I'm not as knowledgeable about.  My ex even told me as we were separating that he will miss my resourcefulness.  I just need to keep tapping into that resourcefulness.  Because with the help of all the resources at my disposal, I got this!

What would I be doing right now if I were still married?

As I sit here in my one comfy chair facing the patio doors with both windows wide open as the sun and breeze washes over me, I listen to laughter at the brewery across the street.  There is the white noise of traffic from the interstate at times interrupted by a train passing by.  I sip a glass of wine as I take in the life around me and feel a grounded sense of calm despite the chaos of my country, a chaos that temporarily feels a bit more distant in moments like this.  I am content.

But where would I be if the divorce last year hadn't happened?

The TV would be playing in the background as I sat on the couch with my laptop.  He would have been flipping through channels or watching something on YouTube.  At one point, I joked that I knew the voices of a couple of his frequent car YouTubers better than I knew his.  In hindsight, there might have been more truth to that than I realized at the time.

The windows would be closed and not much sunlight would be filtering in from our interior courtyard facing apartment.  We would be getting ready to start dinner, a meal with protein and veggies, so that it could be ready in time for the nightly news.  A real meal would be a real plus over the fridge snacking I find myself in now - pieces of lunch meat, pickles and olives, potato salad from the grocery store, way too many bagels - I really struggle with the motivation to cook good meals.

Would we talk about what chaos awaited us on Monday at work?  Maybe.  I wonder how our conversations would have shifted.  He never really wanted to talk politics beyond any superficial level.  The chance we might disagree on an issue seemed to be a threat to him (something I never understood).  Years ago, I had turned to the comments section of the Washington Post to get my need to exchange ideas with people, although that outlet is gone now.

It wouldn't have been a bad way to spend an evening but I don't think it would have given me the peace I feel now.  We had fallen too much into routine.  It had been a while since I/we had evaluated whether that routine was working well.

He complained I wasn't close enough to his mom.

As I sit at my kitchen table and drink my coffee in a mug from the Kualoa Ranch, I think back to that trip to Hawaii.  All my coffee mugs are places I've been, it's a nice way to start the day, usually.

His mom had always wanted to go to Hawaii so we made plans for this trip with her in mind.  At first it was just going to be a round trip cruise out of San Diego with stops on several of the islands in the fall of 2020.  A world-wide pandemic shut that one down.

Looking back, I see we took her on two more trips before we rescheduled the Hawaii one - a fifteen night cruise through the Panama Canal (which my parents joined us on too) and a short five-day Caribbean Cruise in a top suite.  I wish that top suite experience had just been my ex-husband and I.  It was especially weird being the third wheel in that scenario.

But back to the Hawaii trip, when we rebooked for spring of 2023, we decided on a one-way cruise from Hawaii to Vancouver because it would allow us time to explore Hawaii by land before the trip.  I was the always the planner.  I do enjoy it.  And this trip's planning was extensive because of all we wanted to see and do and the combined land/sea aspect to it.  And his mom has a lot of issues walking.  She was supposed to get in the habit of regular walks at her condo complex which would have really helped her endurance but she didn't.  She sat in front of the TV 24/7 instead.  I remember being frustrated at how much that limited our options.  And I'm not talking about expecting her to go on a hike.  I'm talking about her being able to walk a block without having to sit on a bench for ten minutes half-way.

I can't even count how many hours I spent putting together just the right itinerary with all the details in place.  A Luau was something she really wanted to do so I researched two great options that I thought would fit with her interests and abilities to give her some options.   And I found an excursion that was easy but took us to a black sand beach and I balanced my ex-husband's love of Jurassic Park with her abilities to help find the right tour at the Kualoa Ranch.  I found us a hotel in our price range that was close enough to food and the beach and had a car rental package.  And then on the ship, I carefully picked the location of our cabins, made all our dining reservations, and coordinated everything through the moment we would land back home.  If what I did for this trip wasn't a labor of love, I don't know what would be.

But when the trip came, it was a bit lonely.  They sat in the car as I climbed the easy paved path to the lighthouse outside of Honolulu.  They watched from the walkway as I walked the Waikiki Beach and dipped my toes in the Pacific Ocean the evening we arrived.  They did their own thing as I went on a snorkeling excursion in Kona.  I rode the night tender alone in Maui so I could see the ship by night and wander the shops one last time.  They sat in rented chairs (the only two chair rentals left when we arrived) as I walked the beach in Maui alone.  And I often enjoyed our loyalty breakfast alone as I watched the wake of the ship from that beautiful dining room.  I wandered the Butchart Gardens alone as he and his mom stayed close to the entrance and I think spent most of the excursion sitting on a bench.    Over the course of almost three weeks, I think the only real time alone I got with my husband was a sunrise hike at Diamond Head and an early morning snorkel with turtles (both while she slept in at the hotel) and a couple breakfasts over the 12 day cruise.

And then when we split last summer, my ex-husband had the gall to complain about me not being close enough to his mom.  It was like a slap in the face after all the ways I supported his mom and his relationship with his mom (even beyond just these vacations) despite her being a very difficult person who regularly interfered in our marriage.

The Tulips are Blooming.

If you read my post about wandering among the trees last Saturday, you may recall me hinting at my next adventure being among the tulips.  The weather forecast was a bit iffy for today but I really wanted to visit my favorite garden for tulips, the Atlanta Botanical Garden so I made a plan.  

I set my alarm for 4:45 a.m. this morning so that if the weather looked okay in the morning I would be ready to leave by 5:30 a.m.  Yes, most people would consider that insanely early.  But this is my favorite time of day - the quiet before the sun rises.  Over the past nine months, I have spent countless Saturdays watching the sun rise from my car after a good hour or more of driving and this morning was no different.

I have found a peace to the miles of road I have traveled.  There has been a sense of freedom in exploring the never-ending number of new places it will take me along with my old favorites like today's garden, a place I visit frequently.  And it has given me so much time to just be, just exist in this world.

So this morning, I drove the 2.5 hours to the garden, scanned my parking pass, backed into my favorite spot to charge my car, and joined the line of people waiting for the gardens to open.  And then I wandered at my own pace, unencumbered by the needs of anyone else.  I sat with the tulips.  I breathed in the fragrant hyacinths.  I re-traced my steps to my favorite flowers.  And I took so many photos that later I poured over and spent some time editing.  And when I was done wandering, I returned to my car and made the return 2.5 hour journey home.

This is one of the ways I pour into myself.  It's not something new though.  Gardens have been a nourishing place for me for years.  Sometimes my ex-husband would tag along, sometimes not.  I always preferred when he didn't because if he was there, I was always worrying about whether I was spending too much time with a particular flower.  With him, I never stayed as long, never paused and sat as often, never retraced my steps to the best parts.

Love

I read a blog post today by Renée Harmon where she sits down for a coffee date with her future (80 year old) self.  As background, she lost her husband too early to Alzheimer's disease.  In this blog post, she asks her future self out of curiosity whether she will ever love again.  The one-line answer is what ends the blog entry.  It reads:

“You love and are loved every single day, my sister,” she answered.

My eyes watered as I stood up from my kitchen table and walked around my small apartment as I let it sink in.

There was a third person in my marriage.

After the panic and initial onslaught of grief as I watched my marriage suddenly topple last summer, one of my next feelings was one of relief that I would never have to deal with my mother-in-law again.  During our marriage, I knew his mother was a point of contention but I'm not sure I truly saw the entire extent she actually played a role in our marriage.  I see now that she was a third person in my marriage.

There are moments that stick out so clearly where even at the time, I was taken aback by the boundary she crashed through and the ways she tried to manipulate us and exert her influence.

The call to our realtor asking him to convince us not to buy a particular house comes to mind immediately.  That was an awkward conversation with our realtor as he explained the call he received from her.

And then there was the argument where she accused me of not supporting my husband.  She had been visiting for too long of a visit.  While I was out (at work or choir or something), she and my ex had taken some action on a joint account I held with my ex that he had not discussed with me first and that I was uncomfortable with.  As I tried to get clarification on what he had done and express some concern, she jumped into the argument.

There were all the times she would complaint to my ex that I didn't like her after I took some time to myself during a long visit with her (to go to choir or to go find a quiet space to have my weekly call with my parents or to just go for a walk).  I sometimes wonder why my ex-husband shared these conversations with me.

Then there were the vacations we took her on where she was so needy my ex-husband didn't feel he could ever leave her side for any length of time.  I just wanted a quiet morning with him or a dinner together or an excursion together.  I never understood why she couldn't entertain herself for even just an hour.

She had an opinion and advice on everything, even topics she knew absolutely nothing about.  And she would pout if we didn't take her advice.

My ex-husband grew up in a family that used speaker phone for all calls.  Honestly, I didn't think anything of it until the first time he went to visit his parents alone and he called me.  I was having what I thought was a private conversation with him (I couldn't even imagine that a husband wouldn't want to talk to his wife alone) when suddenly his mom chimed in about something in the background.

And then over the years, I got really exhausted hearing every single one of his calls with his mom which were frequent.  They were usually filled with criticism, neither of them truly listening to the other, and spiraling off each other complaining about something.  So I asked him to either not use speaker phone or go in a different room when he made the calls.  Sometimes he would respect that request but usually he just did what he wanted and continued using speaker phone.

Over the past months, the role she played in our lives and honestly even in the end of our marriage has replayed in my head many times.  Sometimes I feel some anger towards her but my real anger is at my ex-husband who allowed all of this to happen, actively participated in it, and very rarely stood up for me.  He chose to focus on his discomfort at feeling in the middle (even though I tried so hard to never make him choose between us) instead of focusing on the harm her actions were causing to me and our marriage.

To be fair, he did learn to set a few boundaries over the years.  He even thanked me for showing him how to set boundaries as we were separating - I guess he and his mom had gotten into an argument when he said no to something and she had intentionally called him "Rebecca" to blame me for teaching him to say no at least occasionally.  He says he stood up for me in that moment.  But in almost the same breath, he was blaming me for not being closer to his mom and for not wanting to participate in every phone call on speaker.

Who am I?

Today’s scooter ride inspiration: I am a combination of the personality that is innate to me and how I choose to respond to the circumstances around me. 

So as I continue on this journey of self-discovery, I’m figuring out what feels in alignment with who I was born to be and what response feels in alignment with who I want to be. 

Appreciating what you have

As I fried two eggs this morning, I was taken back to another time and place.  A favorite memory with my ex isn't something big.  It's the countless mornings we cooked breakfast together.  A favorite of ours was an egg, bacon, avocado, and bagel sandwich.  He knew how to cook the eggs just how we each liked them - the yolks a bit runnier for me.  I had perfected slicing and arranging the avocado on the bagel.  Beyond our contributions, it was the connection in cooking together that made the moments special.

Those days are over.  I won't ever cook another bagel sandwich with him.  And that does make me a bit sad.  But it also is a really good reminder to appreciate those little moments in life.  Life goes too darn fast and it can change on a dime.  I don't want to miss it all by forgetting to focus on and appreciate the present.

I feel sad.

Improv was great tonight, although I'm a bit self-conscious about my performance as an expert in ancient Egypt - part of that was being paired with two very dynamic personalities - I struggle more being assertive enough in situations like that.  But my walk home from Improv didn't carry with me that joy from the class.  It was like a cloud descended over me as soon as I stepped out into the streets.

I miss....I don't know.  Companionship, maybe. Having someone who makes sure I get home safely, definitely.  Someone to talk about my day with, maybe.  Although, was he ever really that good of a listener?

Or maybe it's this upcoming trip in June.  I made the final payment for the first week of the trip on Friday and then spent some time on the phone with the cruise line today re-pricing to the sale price.  Final payment on the second week is due in a couple weeks.  This would have been a trip to celebrate our 20th anniversary.  In June, I'll be on the same ship where we got married approximately 20 years prior.

As I walked home after work, I was so confident, ready to take advantage of this opportunity to make new memories.  I was excited about the money I had saved and excited for this trip.  But now I don't feel so sure.  

Why did he push for this ship when we were planning this trip with my family if he had one foot out the door?  

Belonging and Acceptance

Part of feeling like I belong somewhere is feeling like I'm accepted by the person/people there.  It's only when I feel accepted that I feel like I can let loose and truly be me.  So the struggle now is how to make sense of a realization that he silently wasn't accepting me in so many ways.  My feeling of belonging was based on false representations by him.

There's a moment about five or six years into our marriage that keeps running through my head as I struggle with this.  But let me back up even further to give some context.  When we were dating, we attended colleges that were four hours apart.  We would get together as often as we could on the weekends.  Some of those weekends, we would meet at a campground.  I even proposed to him during a weekend camping trip.

When it came time to register for our wedding, we registered for so much camping equipment.  I really thought this was a shared hobby.  And with how involved he was in our wedding registry, I thought it was safe to assume that.

So five or six years in, after quite a few camping trips, it came out how much he hated camping and had always dreaded our camping trips.  So we adjusted.  I did some solo camping.  I didn't pressure him to come on our annual June family camping trip although he did come some years and left early at least one year.  We talked about him staying in a hotel like my mom always did and joining me during the day although I don't think he ever took me up on that offer.  

Over the years, I would laugh it off when it crossed my mind how silly it seemed he would register for something he hated but maybe that should have been my first clue that he didn't truly accept me enough to be honest with me.  That he would rather let resentment build up as he dreads each camping trip than have a conversation with me.  Maybe it should have been a clue that I didn't really know the man I had married.  

And in hindsight that was far from the only thing he silently didn't accept about me.  He didn't like that I wasn't closer to his mom.  He hated that I needed to understand the why behind decisions or that I asked questions instead of blindly accepting opinions and statements as facts.  

He wished I had played video games with him (despite the fact that he had never asked me to) and he wanted more of a social life (despite that he never attempted to create one or communicate to me he wanted that).  And if he could save money by not buying the toothpaste or lip chap he knew was my favorite, he would without saying a word to me.  

And I suspect he resented that I joined a church when we moved south despite the fact that I never asked him to join or pressured him to come with me.

If I had known all this in the moment, I never would have felt that sense of belonging so I did I ever truly belong?  There's that huge disconnect between what I felt in the moment and all that I enjoyed in my life with him vs the false reality it was all built on (and a lot of uncertainty as to how deep that false reality went - my ex may very well have had some sincere feelings that mixed in with the false representations).

Belonging

This isn't a fully thought out train of thought yet so bear with me in this blog post.  But it is something that my brain keeps coming back to and I feel like I made some progress on my walk to church this morning.  Maybe writing about it will help me further process it.

I am unique.  I am not even remotely like anyone I have ever met.  I have often felt misunderstood and rarely have I found social spaces where I feel like I belong.  I have always felt this way going back to  my earliest memories.  So many of my social interactions throughout life have felt forced or restrained or superficial.

So when I went to an event at my church a couple years ago about the Enneagram and learned that I am a five, I wasn't surprised.  It is my understanding that fives are the rarest types and they are even rarer among women. 

So why is this all relevant to today and this blog?  That's where this morning's walk to church comes into play.

When I first started dating my ex-husband, I felt I had found someone where I fit, where I belonged.  I felt free to lean fully into myself and believed I was accepted.  Here was someone I felt comfortable with and who I thought understood me.  That feeling, although it may have been misguided in some ways, never went away until the very end.

So after it all ended, maybe what I am grieving most is the loss of feeling like I belong somewhere and the fear that I will never find it again.

A need to wander among trees

My Dad and I frequently talk about our need to wander among the trees.  Our conversations always remind me to get back out there.  I wonder if they do the same for him.  There's something about sharing a common passion that motivates one to keep doing it.

So this morning, I spent almost four hours wandering among the trees at a local preserve.  I probably hiked a little over 3 miles so it was a slow pace to allow me to really take it all in.

It gave me time to think and process in a way that doesn't allow me to stay stuck.  I'll be following a train of thought as I navigate the rocky path when a Carolina Wren will suddenly fly across the path in front of me pulling me out of my thoughts and back into the moment.  Or the sound of a waterfall or babbling brook will soothe my nervous system as I work through something in my head.

It also gave me the chance to completely clear my head of everything but the present.  I laid on a flat rock in the middle of the stream, down river from a small waterfall and just watched the water flow, a poem forming in my head, adjusting a few times so I could also capture a few photos.  I sat on a bench with a bright red cardinal singing loudly in the tree above me and tufted titmice singing harmony from a distance as I swung my legs since they could not reach the ground.

And I found some moments to laugh.  Photography is my hobby and so I'm always looking for the interesting photo opportunity and it gets me into interesting situations at times, often without the sense to think through ahead of time how I'm going to get myself out of those interesting situations.  At one point I was clinging to the trunk of a fallen tree over a stream as I lowered my camera to get the right angle, hoping I wouldn't fall into the water!  And then I had to figure out how to climb backwards and find some solid ground to step back onto.

So the only question remaining is where will I venture to next?  I think the tulips should be blooming by next weekend...

We became strangers overnight

The oddest thing I have ever experienced was watching the man I thought I knew well for two decades turn into a stranger overnight, like a switch was flipped.  More than six months later, it still unsettles me at times.

I walked past his apartment today and noticed one of the neighborhood cats curled up on the chair that used to be mine.  I felt so much distance between the reality on that patio and where I stood. Yet, less than a year ago we were a happy couple vacationing together in the Caribbean, or so I thought.  In all likelihood, he was probably a stranger then too, even though I didn't realize it.  It probably didn't happen overnight for him.  

Joy

As I soared through the park, I looked down at my pink sneakers resting on the platform of my well-worn Razor scooter.  The sun was bright.  The wind blew through my hair.  I could hear both an Eastern Towhee and a Northern Cardinal in the background and the American Robins were plentiful in the grass. The amount of joy rushing through me took me back to my childhood days. 

When I think about the last six months, it is an overwhelming number of moments like these that come to mind first. That’s not to dismiss the pain, the countless tears, the day I yelled at the waves of the gulf, the sleepless nights, the loss of weight due to what I call the “divorce diet”, etc.  All those things happened too but they don’t define me. It is my joy that more closely aligns with me and that shines through most these past months. 

So where did this joy come from in the darkest days of my life?  Is it my response to the darkness? Or was it always there before?  If it was always there before, what was holding me back before?

I feel like I have generally been a fairly positive person. I notice things that others don’t-find the beauty others walk past. But I don’t recall feeling a sense of joy like I do today on such a consistent basis, at least not in recent years. 

As I write this post, I can’t help but be reminded about the time I stomped and danced in puddles one rainy morning on the way to work just a month or two ago. It was the first time I had done that since I was a child. It’s that uninhibited joy that feels new. 

Every relationship ends poorly

 Today's Thread of inspiration

"I just remembered my previous therapist telling me “every relationship ends poorly. Either one of you dies or you break up. There’s no such thing as a happy ending” and she’s right"

I suppose if you are the one who dies first, you may miss the grief.  But as a woman married to a man a year old her than her, statistically, it was more likely he would die first.  So I was likely going to deal with the grief one way or another.

Why not now in my 40s when I can take advantage of the opportunity to reinvent myself?

Being a female alone in this world

As I walked through my city after dark tonight, something felt off.  I wished I had brought my scooter.  I'm writing this from the safety of my home so you can be assured I made it home safely.  But that doesn't erase the intuition I had to be a bit more alert and to walk through in my head the protocols that have become routine to make sure I hadn't become too comfortable.

I feel pretty comfortable in my part of my city.  I know the faces of the homeless and the regulars and what behavior is normal to expect from them.  I know the better lit streets, the business that are open later, and where the dog walkers are usually out.   I have the phone number of the city security program that offers escorts programed in my phone.  And I stay off my phone (although keep in handy) so that I can pay attention to my surroundings.  In more than six years, only three times have I crossed the street because I felt uncomfortable.

Men don't generally think of any of these things.  I had a conversation with my ex-husband once and he was clueless.  But while we were married, at my request, he tracked my location on the nights I was out.  I would text him when I left so he would know when to expect me.  And if I asked him to, he would come meet me at least part way to walk me home.  

So tonight, this off feeling felt especially eerie.  I have a friend with access to my location but she lives 30 minutes out of town.  And it's not quite the same as someone waiting for you at home with easier access to help.

I wish this world were safe for women.  I wish I didn't have to go through a long checklist of precautions anytime I go out alone.  So tonight I'm grieving the loss of the safety of my marriage.

Intuition

I don't believe in a God that acts as a puppeteer because I believe we have free will.  But I do believe in intuition (maybe more subtle guidance from God?) and the way it seems to understand the bigger picture in a way we can't in the moment.

Maybe intuition knew I needed to face the chaos of 2025 alone.  And maybe intuition knew my ex-husband couldn't learn what he needed to learn in the security of our relationship.  Maybe it guided both of us in our decisions last year (his to end it and mine in how I responded to it such that a divorce could happen quickly).

And now it's up to each of us to take advantage of what intuition has given us to grow and move forward.

Facing Crisis Alone vs Together

This morning as I checked the news and social media, I came across some information that made me think of my ex-husband and worry about the security of his job.  It was a heavy way to start the day as I couldn't help but worry about him.  

That lead to the reminder that he had chosen to abandon me in a time where I could foresee us both potentially needing some support in the near future (a time that has now come).  I still feel a lot of anger about that.

I then headed to work and I think it was on my scooter ride into work that the following analysis unfolded in my head.  (My therapist asked me where I had come up with this and I couldn't remember in the moment but I believe it was somewhere in the park.)

I took the time to really think about what my role would be in a time like this where we both were facing chaos and crisis.  And if I'm honest with myself, I know he wouldn't have had the capacity to provide me any support and he would have leaned on me to support him and soothe him.  I'm sure he would have buried some of it - he did that a lot.  But in moments like this it would have been too overwhelming to fully bury so some of it would have come out.  Regardless, he wouldn't have had space for my feelings.

My therapist asked me if I would have just neglected myself to care for him.  Initially I said yes, although I'm not truly sure on that.  We had never experienced anything like this where we both were in crisis at the same time.  And I feel like over the years I had gotten better at setting boundaries when I truly needed to.  Maybe that is what made him decide to leave.

So I want to believe I would have found space for myself and my feelings even if it left him having to do some of his own self-soothing.  But I don't know.

My take-away from this whole thought process that started this morning and continued through my therapy session is that even if my heart hasn't caught up yet, is that I probably am managing and moving through this crisis far better alone than I would have we were still together.  So maybe the timing of the divorce was actually right so I had the strength to handle the challenges of this year.

Society gives men "permission to be ruled by their urges"

"Men are given permission to be ruled by their urges.  Women are given responsibility to manage the consequences."  This was part of a thread on Threads that echoed in my head as I re-read it.  It is kind of in the same line of thought as my colleague who once said that men play checkers (only focused on the next move) while women play chess (focused on how that next move will impact things many moves down the line).

The comments my ex-husband made as I was trying to get some explanation out of him demonstrate a bit of this thinking.  He wanted freedom.  He didn't believe humans were meant to be monogamous long-term.  Just like with every new car he purchased, he seemed to think the grass was always greener on the other side.  

And his abrupt departure left me with all the consequences.  Even negotiating the settlement only happened because of my resourcefulness to figure out how to value retirement accounts, my request that we exchange copies of all our financial documents, and my communication of what I wanted.  Our material belongings mostly got divided as I did the work to sort through so much of them.  And his original plan was for me to help him find an attorney to draw up the divorce paperwork - I drew the line in the sand on that one and insisted I would be hiring my own to review whatever documents he had someone else draft.

Back to the original quote, if my ex-husband who is a fairly decent man when looking at the society as a whole, has bought into this mindset created by society, imagine all the ways it is affecting so many women far worse off than I am.  The more I view this world as a single woman, the less I want to participate in dating again.  

I hear he is volunteering

I heard he is starting to do some volunteer work at the zoo.  It will be good for him.  It's things like this he should have done while we were married so he didn't have to lean on me so heavily.  It would have given him more outlets.  It would have made him a more well-rounded person.  It might have helped him mature.

I wonder though if he has added this to his list of things he claims he couldn't do while married.  As we separated last year, he blamed me for restricting him and for us not having a more active social life.  I remember asking him when I ever said "no" when he proposed something.  He didn't have an answer.  And he seemed to have forgotten all the times I encouraged him to find his own thing as I went off to choir each week or took classes at the local college or became active in a church.

So I was supposed to not only read his mind that he wanted more social opportunities but also find those opportunities for him?

But back to the here and now, maybe this will be very good for him.  Maybe, despite all the pain he caused me, he will actually create something good out of this divorce.  Maybe I need to stop worrying about whether or not he will learn anything from this and get back to creating my own good.

Forgiveness

I believe in the power of forgiveness.  And I don't mean any power given to the recipient.  I'm talking about the positive impact on the person granting forgiveness.  I should be clear here that I'm not talking about a decision to let a person back into your life.  That's completely separate from forgiveness.  A decision to let someone back into your life requires participation from the other person to repair the relationship.  You can forgive someone without their participation and decide to move on with your life without them.

So forgiveness has been my end goal.  I want to ultimately walk away from this marriage holding onto no grudges, resentments, or hard feelings.  So as I spend time processing my grief, I'm paying attention to specifically where I hold hard feelings to know where I need to release them.  (And maybe this would be a good place to point out that the process is not linear - I might think I have moved past one thing only to have it resurface later.  So it is an ongoing process.)

One area of hard feelings is in the way he didn't show up in the marriage - the lack of investment in us, the lack of communication, the conflict avoidance, the focus on my flaws without any self-reflection into his role, etc.  This is the easiest part to forgive.  I had already accepted this was who he was.  His mom (and maybe even dad to a certain extend) really messed him up in childhood and continues to feed into a toxic dynamic to this day.  That doesn't excuse his behavior.  He is an adult in his 40s.  He has had plenty of time to heal from those wounds so that he doesn't harm others with his behaviors.  But I have empathy for the hard start to his life.  And I play a role in accepting these behaviors and I played my own role in those dynamics.

The more challenging area of hard feelings though rests on how he behaved specifically last year.  In the spring we were making all kinds of future plans - planing vacations together, trading in his car, discussing retirement plans, etc.  I was participating in these conversations with the belief that we were doing well as a couple and going to stay together.  He was participating in these conversations knowing he already had one foot out the door.  The lack of transparency and the active participation in deceiving me is so painful.  He didn't even care enough about me to find a way to give me a heads up.

And then when it happened, it happened so fast because he had already processed his emotions, made is decision and likely planned logistics out for himself.  So I was lost in a whirlwind of processing my emotions and figuring out logistics in a very short time.  It felt so incredibly unfair.

And then to make it all worse, although he was working with a therapist, he hadn't even made it a priority to figure out how to communicate with me why he was leaving.  To this day, I have no clue what his actual reasons were.  I can guess based on what I know about him but they don't answer the question as to what happened specifically in 2024 and what specifically was in his mind when he suddenly (from my perspective) felt the need to ditch his spouse of almost two decades.

It's the lying, deception, and abrupt discard that all happened in 2024 that felt so incredibly cruel and is a lot harder to process and forgive as this was all coming from the man I had believed loved me.

Ripples in the Water

I read a blog post from someone I know who is a really good writer about ripples in the water.  She is a widow who lost her husband to dementia and that is a theme in a lot of her writing.  This post focused on the ripples her husband left behind of all the people he touched in subtle ways who then carried that influence on.  It was really a beautiful blog post.

It brought me back to a church service in August.  I wrote about it here.  A member of our congregation got up to give the prayer and talked about the people that influence us, encouraging us to reflect on those people.  Tears flowed down my cheeks as I thought of my soon-to-be (at the time) ex-husband.  The pain he caused didn't erase the influence he had on me.

So as I read this blog post today, I asked myself if it was too soon to start thinking about the ripples of my ex's influence.  I think part of healing is taking the good with me and leaving the bad behind.  I'm still angry.  And sad.  I've still got a long ways to go in this process.  But I'm learning how to hold conflicting emotions at the same time.  Maybe I don't have to fully let go of the anger before I start recognizing that which I should appreciate.  Maybe those things can be happening at the same time.

Maybe I'm not there yet though.  I think I have to let go of our potential first, a potential he is not capable of or interested in.

YouTube and Podcasts

I had a really productive therapy session yesterday that is leaving me torn between multiple topics to write about today.  I guess that is a good problem to have.  Let me start with the issues with YouTube (and podcasts as a similar concept applies there too).

First, I'm not anti-YouTube.  I even have my own channel.  There's some great stuff on YouTube.  I also enjoy a number of podcasts.

The issue is that anyone can post anything at all.  There isn't anyone to fact-check it and people often don't pay attention to the speaker's credentials.  And this has become a real problem in the mental health space with so much garbage out there to sort through to find anything good.  What that means is that it is easy to find content that validates what you want to hear.

My ex-husband was (probably still in) obsessed with YouTube.  That is where he went for all his answers.  And as things were falling apart in the end, his focus switched to many mental health and relationship videos.  I can't even count how many times I cringed at the things said in some of the videos I saw him watching.  I'm not a mental health professional so I didn't have a researched reason for why I was cringing and so I didn't speak up but the messages often just didn't seem right and they seemed to be creating more division between him and me.  

So my ears really perked up when my licensed and educated therapist mentioned the dangers of YouTube and podcasts and the misconceptions they put into people's heads.  She mentioned that she had worked with a number of men who had fallen into that YouTube/podcast trap and the challenge of working with them.

You know as a country where both sides of the political divide blame the other for letting themselves be brainwashed by online content, you would think we would learn to be a bit more discerning about the content we consume.  But we are not.  I try hard to vet sources of what I read and hear but I know I could do better and this was a good reminder of that.  It was also a reminder that this needs to extend beyond just the political content we may trying to fact-check but it also needs to extend to all areas of our life every time we open up an internet browser, YouTube, or some other social media platform.