Why does it still matter?

In the space and time that has passed since the separation and divorce, I have realized that I am better off.  I have so much more energy.  I'm developing some great friendships that are so positive.  I'm learning new things about myself and developing new skills.  I'm leaning into the joy of life more than ever.  I'm healthier maintaining the weight I lost last year, eating differently, and joining exercise classes in addition to walking more.  Surprisingly, I'm even feeling good about my financial situation, something that I feared most having to support myself on my one, quite a bit lower salary.

So the divorce was good for me.  Some might even say "all's well that ends well."

So why does it still matter that I have so many unanswered questions about what happened last year, why he made the decision to dump me, and why he treated me so poorly in the process?  Why am I still stuck on not understanding what was in his head?

No matter how much I focus forward on the good ahead of me, I still can't shake the bizarre turn to last year, the disconnect to anything that makes sense to me.

Rewind back to the Why's

I've made a lot of progress.  I thought I was past all the questions of why.  I thought I had accepted that I likely never would get the answers I seek.

But the photos of last year are bringing back all those questions.  I look at the ones from today that show the two of us on the beaches of Grand Turk with what appear to be genuine smiles on our faces.  And then I see the photo I took of a Mangrove Cuckoo, a bird we had never seen before and likely never will again as it is pretty uncommon.  It was an exciting find for both of us.  I'm going to include a photo I took of the bird because I want to remember the Mangrove Cuckoo.

There's such a disconnect from the memories of that trip and where we were at six weeks later when he told me he was questioning our relationship, and in hindsight, I believe his decision to leave had already been made.  He just took the next six weeks after that to find all my flaws to justify his decision in his mind before he finally told me he would be filing for divorce.

So what happened between April and late May?  Was it something during his work travels in Philadelphia or the week he spent in New Orleans?  What happened to cause him to just flip a switch?  

How can someone walk away from a two decades-long, serious relationship with so little communication and so many unanswered questions and be okay with themself?  How can someone do that to someone they claim to have loved and committed to?

Even with all the work I've done to move past it, I struggle with the significant number of unanswered questions.  Will I ever truly be okay with not knowing?

Single Life

Maybe it's my personality.  Maybe it's the way I was raised.  Maybe it's the circumstances I was thrown into before the divorce was even final. But one thing I have not struggled with that I hear many single people struggle with is doing things on my own.  It's kind of odd to reflect on now.  Before the separation last summer, the last time I really did anything was 2002, the semester I studied in Spain.  Yet I transitioned back to being single (in this regard) as if 2002 was just yesterday.

I took myself out to dinner tonight, asked for an outdoor table where I could watch the activity of the city, sipped a glass of wine, and enjoyed some Greek food.  I didn't feel lonely or out of place.  I just enjoyed it.

I've gone to the beach alone.  I've visited a number of my favorite gardens alone.  I've seen an Improv Show, grabbing drinks before hand alone.  I've gone to a baseball game alone.  I've gone to an art show alone.  I've wandered New York City and Washington DC alone.  I've taken a Bermuda cruise and an Amtrak overnight train ride alone.

I don't wait for people to be available to join me.  I don't even ask people most of the time.  I probably should get better about that.  It would be a good way to better foster some of the friendships I'm building and my guess is that there are people who would join me from time to time.

One year ago today

This evening, Facebook reminded me of memories from years past from both Facebook and Instagram.  I could turn off memories but I don't want to because so many of them are positive. Today's was harder though.

On this day one year ago, I embarked on a cruise with my ex-husband.  We woke up at a hotel on the water and watched the sunrise.  We paid the small specialty dining fee to have a quiet lunch at Johnny Rocket's on the ship with views of the harbor.  I'm sure he made use of a drink ticket to get a milkshake.  We enjoyed our first dinner at the perfect table for two in a quieter section of the dining room with an excellent waiter.  And as the night came to a close, we walked the promenade where I had one last drink, a sangria as we walked past some of the music acts.

On that day, I had no clue what I would be facing in the months ahead.  I thought we were happily married.  His mind had to have already been headed for the exit though. How does someone pretend like that?  It baffles me, just boggles my mind.

Over the next days, there will be a lot of memories - the walks on the beach including the day it rained in St. Croix, the off-roading dune buggy adventure that he always wanted to do, the spotting of the sister ship to the one we were supposed to be on together last September, the sunsets, the Brown Boobies that soared along side the ship, and then Gary the Grackle that rode on our hood through the Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge drive (we didn't know his name was Gary though at the time - I just learned that this year, I wish I could tell my ex-husband his name).

I'm going to focus on giving myself a lot of grace as I move through these next 10 days or so.

Who we think we are and how others view us

Last night, I started reading the book "Becoming Nicole" by Amy Ellis Nutt.  I wasn't more than just a few pages into the prologue when a statement really made me pause.

She writes:

Who we are is inseparable not only from who we think we are, but from who others think we are.  We are touched and loved, we are appreciated or dismissed, praised or scorned, comforted or wounded.  But before all else, we are seen.  We are identified by others through the contours and colors and movements of our bodies.

I started to touch on this idea with my post yesterday about not recognizing myself and being fascinated about how others may view me but I hadn't taken the thought this far.  As I have marinated on this thought over coffee and then as the water poured over me in the shower, I've realized how the relationships in our life are intertwined with who we are.  And this isn't just about our romantic relationship - our friendships and relationships with family members play a role too.  I suspect there is even a minor role in the random interactions we have with strangers throughout each day.

My reflections have led me to two takeaways that I think are important.

First, we have the power to uplift people through the way we treat them, view them, accept them, etc.  We can either have a positive or a negative influence on someone.  It's our choice to make and if we don't take the time to self-reflect, we can't be intentional in that choice.  I want to intentionally uplift people, bring out their good qualities, and be that positive influence.

Second, we have the power to choose who we let into our close circle.  We get to choose people who will uplift, look for our good, accept us, reflect back to us in ways that positively influence us, etc.

With all that said, I think we need to be careful to not let this blind us to the need for growth and improvement.  None of this means, we shouldn't challenge each other to be better and to grow.  I want people in my life who challenge me.  But I want it to be done in a loving, uplifting way that is a positive influence.

I'm still spending too much energy on him.

I'm a bit taken aback to realize how much of my therapy session yesterday evening I spent on my concern over what I expect my ex-husband is currently facing in his job and what support he may have for that.  And then since then, I have found myself on Reddit twice reading the comments from people who work in my ex-husband's agency.

Those thoughts seem to take up more space in my head than what I'm going through - the job opportunity I'm mulling over, the support staff meeting on Friday where it was brought up how many of us are planning for retirement, the lack of information about my own agency's plans, the emergency case that came up and changed the whole vibe at work on Friday, the ethical questions my colleagues across the country are facing and the consequences of sticking to their ethics, the tight timeline I have to transfer money in the middle of a volatile stock market, etc.

My first reaction to that is that I'm just incredibly capable.  I know how to handle my life.  I'm ready to deal with whatever comes my way.  So I don't waste a lot of time worrying about it.

But I think there is more to it.  I think I respond to my life that way because I spent two decades prioritizing my ex-husband.  I spent two decades taking on his emotions, worries, and challenges that all I had left for my own was to deal and move on.  There wasn't time to stress or worry about me.

That's not all bad when it comes to my own life.  Worry gains me nothing.  It's not all that productive.  But I need to stop the worrying as it relates to him.  I'm tired this week.  I have less energy.  I thought it was because I was doing too much.  But maybe it's just because I'm sending too much energy his way as I worry about how he is handling it all.

I don't recognize myself.

I received some sports bras that I had ordered in the mail today so I tried one on and stepped in front of my bathroom mirror.  The woman who looked back looked so foreign to me.  And it wasn't just the shorter haircut or the weight I've lost.  I've had months to get used to those.

It was the way she held herself and the way she looked back at me.  She had a confidence in her and came across as no-nonsense.  The self-consciousness I feel didn't come across at all.  There was no indecisiveness apparent at all. 

And there was something quieter, softer in the back of her eyes, maybe a wariness.

I wonder if it's just the fact that my self-concept hasn't caught up to the discovery and growth I have experienced over such a short time.  Or maybe something still doesn't quite fit yet.

Sometimes my mind wanders to how others might see me - to how my subconscious and conscious self comes across to others.  It's quite fascinating to think about the many different people we are to each of those we are close to and how those people differ from our own view of our self.

Whatever decision I make will be the right one

I'm at a crossroads.  An opportunity has unexpectedly stepped in front of me and so I'm evaluating the pros and cons of it.  As I was talking it through with my parents this evening, I realized something about me.  I may agonize over what to do when faced with a big decision but once I make the decision, I just make the best out of it.  I don't live in regrets.  I don't spend much time contemplating "what ifs" about the past.  Even with my marriage, I have really tried to stay away from what ifs that contemplate trying to undo what already has been done.

And so I ended up the call with my mom by saying "whatever decision I make will be the right one" and that was quite freeing.  So I don't know what I will do but I will sleep on it.  I will consider it.  I might talk it over with a few more people.  And then I'm just going to go with my gut.

I'm resilient.  I always land on my feet.  I know how to make the best of situations.  I can do this.

I worry more for him than I do for me.

I start my morning each day by browsing Reddit to see what horrors face federal employees this week.  My agency rarely gets mentioned and my leadership has been silent but what is happening to the rest of the government and what we are seeing being asked of people in other offices is already causing some people to jump ship.  So regardless if I eventually go through RIFs, damage is already being done.  It's also shifting my relationships with colleagues.  

But it's not me I worry about.  I've gone over my budget.  I've been saving money to put in a rainy day fund.  I've got a resume reasonably up-to-date.  And although I really don't want to leave my job - I really enjoy the work and find it meaningful, I would welcome a new adventure.  And with no real ties to my city, I can expand to so many opportunities.  I am resilient.

It's my ex-husband I worry about.  This was his dream career.  I remember him talking about it back when we were in college and dating.  When he got that first job with his agency in another city, I didn't even hesitate to start packing.  We were both so excited.

And then I watched him finally start thrive in a job.  He had struggled so much at his previous jobs in the private sector.  But this was different.  This was where he found his groove.  He had some missteps as he advanced - taking on a management role was not for him but he found his way back to what he loved.

His agency is coming up frequently these days - probationary employees fired and then rehired but put on administrative leave who now may come back next week (which probably affects many of the people he was mentoring), a second push to get people to resign, offers of early retirement, the cancellation of leases on the office buildings that house the employees, notices of upcoming RIFs.  

I haven't talked to him so I don't know what specifically of all this is directly affecting him but I imagine much of it is.

I don’t know who he has to talk to or lean on anymore. When we were married it was just me. He isn’t close with his brother. And his mom voted for this plus has so many of her own anxieties and issues that she has never really been an emotional support for him. And he has never had any real close friends.

I also can’t imagine what it feels like to know your mom voted against your interests and for someone who may destroy your dream career. That just sits so heavy with me as an outsider looking in.

So although I know I can’t be there for him (for multiple reasons), today I’m going to hold some space in my mind and heart for his pain,  struggle, and maybe grief.

A foreign experience

I looked down at my feet hitting the bricks, moving to the beat of the hip hop song in the middle of an urban park in the south and was transported back to 2002, a 20 year old version of me.  The experience wasn't the same in 2002 but the feeling was exactly how I remember it, like these were parallel experiences.

And it wasn't really about one exact moment in either case.  It was a moment that represented a larger time when my life just felt so foreign to me that I wondered how I had ended up there.

In 2002, my eyes kept glancing down at my feet hitting the brick and cobblestone of the sidewalks in Valladolid, Spain.  My every waking moment and even many of my dreams were in another language so much so that when I called my parents random Spanish words would flow out and they had to keep asking me what I meant.  And my nights were spent wandering those streets after a late dinner, anything to get out of the small home of my host family.  It was an unfamiliar schedule, an imperfect language, a culture I didn't fully understand, and me constantly stepping out of my comfort zone as I tried to experience everything.  It all felt so foreign from who I believed myself to be.  And it literally was a foreign country and experience.

Today's feeling of a foreign experience was more metaphorical, although there are still parts of the southern culture and even occasional phrases I don't fully understand.  And I definitely have been constantly stepping out of my comfort zone as I allow myself to break the artificial limits I created and truly lean into who I might become.  And the feeling of everything being so foreign was just as strong.

I still love him.

I’m going to be honest. I still love him and care deeply about him. Those feelings may never really go away. 

AND I recognize that I am not what he needs now. 

AND I have decided that it’s time to finally love me more. 

All three of those things are true at the very same time.  Maybe that's what makes the healing so complicated.  I'm trying to find that space where I feel good in the life I create as I move on without erasing the past and while embracing the impact my past has on my present and future.

Deep Thoughts

The way he looked at me on Friday is still with me even as I have moved forward and bounced back from the grief it caused me.  I wonder though, how self-aware he even was of the way he looked at me.  And I wonder how accurately I ever interpreted his expressions.  There is too much space between his conscious and subconscious thoughts, my conscious and subconscious thoughts, and the way we each express those thoughts.

So when I say it unnerved me how much power he still seemed to have over me in that moment, is it really power he has over me?  Or is the power in the perceptions that I allow to persist in my mind?  

Action is the Antidote to Anxiety

A colleague told me this a few weeks back - "Action is the antidote to anxiety."  The idea is to focus on taking action on the things that we can control, being ready with our response to life's challenges.  I think there is a lot of truth to that.

With the uncertainty in my job, I've spent some time combing over my budget, figuring out what a bare bones budget looks like and focusing on how building up the emergency fund I think I may need someday.  I've also cut a lot of my non-essential spending.  My resume is mostly up-to-date from the job I applied to last year and I have copies of any relevant personnel documents at home now.  I've also started thinking about which cities I would enjoy living in if I find myself job hunting again.  If I lose my job (or feel the time has come that I need to leave), I'm ready to deal with it so I'm not worrying about it so much anymore.  If it happens, it will just be the next adventure in my life.

When my marriage fell apart last summer, I spent those first weeks and months focusing on the things I could control - developing a budget, downloading statements of all our assets and debts, looking for apartments, making lists of the things I wanted to take with me, building a social network for support, etc.  Honestly, it didn't leave me time to worry much and when worry did creep into my mind, I could go over all the plans I was making.

Action won't solve all my worries but it definitely lessens them quite a bit.

It's a new day!

I ended my post last night with "Tomorrow is a new day."  So here I am on this rainy day to share that a new day did indeed come.

No matter how far along I feel like I have come in this healing journey, inevitably something comes along that knocks me back down.  And although I hope those triggers happen with less frequency over time and have less of an impact, I imagine this will be my life for some time still.  I don't know if you ever truly get over a great loss.  You just find a way to grow from the experience and put it into the right perspective so that you can move on.  

So back to today, I woke up to the sound of rain.  I love rain.  In planning for my walk to church, I put on a pair of quick dry shorts and sandals and pulled out my rain jacket.  The rain was pretty steady and clearly had been quite steady for many hours as the puddles were abundant and deep.  

I paused only for a moment when I reached that first puddle before I stepped into the cool, ankle deep water.  The feel of my feet in the rain water gathered on the ground restored something in me.  Joy bubbled over as I stomped in the next puddle and danced in the rain.  When given the choice, I even turned right onto the street with an even larger puddle.

When I arrived at church, I was ready to lean into the energy and love that filled the building.  I even had a chance to sit next to a new friend when the choir joined the congregation to listen to our new interim senior pastor preach.

I'm sure that yesterday won't be the last day I struggle to pull myself out a funk.  But it sure helps to see the pattern repeated over and over of getting a chance at a new day.  It makes moving through the pain more bearable when there is a certainty of joy to follow eventually.

I'm just lost today.

I'm restless and lost and a bit down today.  I'm struggling to find the joy.  I tried walking the park a bit and even sat on my therapy bench around mid-day.  I was out long enough that I actually see some color on my shoulders.  And then I came back and finished my audiobook and napped and drove myself crazy before I pushed myself out the door again, this time to the baseball game.

The weather was mostly perfect, except for a short rain shower which I actually usually enjoy.  The temperatures were in the upper 70s with low humidity and a nice breeze.  Attendance at the game was light enough that I could find some good seats, first a few innings near right field and then the rest of the game right behind home plate.  I drank a beer from my home state and had a funnel cake, which in hindsight may not have been the best choice.  It was all a nice distraction but it didn't do much for my mood.

I kept thinking about the last game my ex and I went to.  It was a Thursday because I remember laughing about how with the drink specials, my beer was cheaper than his bottle of water.  He didn't watch the game or interact with me all that much because he was so focused on a book.  He wasn't typically a reader but for some reason, he really got into the Harry Potter books last year and the year before.

Although I wasn't someone who needed all his attention everywhere we went, I remember it sitting different with me this time.  It was those in-between months after he told me he was questioning our relationship but before he finally called it quits.  He kept wanting to do stuff together as if that is what would help me figure out our relationship.  This was one of those things.  That ballgame was his idea.

In hindsight, I think he just wanted distractions so he didn't have to actually face our relationship.  I'm pretty sure his decision was already made by that point.  

In later conversations with him, it became clear that he wasn't even making use of his therapy sessions to talk about his marriage or decision to leave.  It sounded like his sole focus was on building up his self- image and confidence.  I don't say that to dismiss the importance of that work.  It's just so wild to me that someone would divorce their spouse without any warning or much of an explanation and not even use their therapist to help process it, clarify their decision, or even figure out how to communicate better about it.  I actually asked him to cover his therapy costs out of his own funds when I realized this.  To not even take advantage of his therapist to learn how to be kinder and more honest in how he ended the relationship just made an already cruel breakup feel even worse.

But I digress, I'm not sure how I veered off onto the topic of his therapy.  But maybe the meandering of this post is just a really good example of how lost I feel today.  Well, it is late so I should get some sleep.  Tomorrow is a new day.

He was a good partner in so many ways.

So much of my processing lately has been on recognizing and trying to understand the things that went wrong that I couldn't fully see at the time.  But today I'm flooded with all the ways that we acted as a team, as partners, all the ways that we were so well aligned.

In two decades, we faced a lot together and handled it quite well.  I think about all of the job changes and moves we made.  We lived in ten different homes located in four different areas!  Sometimes it was navigating a job loss or a complete career change in addition to a move.  In one case, we took a huge financial hit with a condo that was underwater.

In thinking about the conversations we had, the decisions we made, and the physical work we did side by side that came with each move, I just can't imagine a better partner in it all.

And it continued with conversations we had, decisions we made, and work we did to fairly split our lives as we divorced last year.  We didn't even need attorneys to help us except make sure the documents were drafted accurately to reflect our agreement.

And it wasn't just in the big things like a job change or move, it was the every day - the routines we established, the ways we worked towards financial goals, the travel we did together whether it was a day trip or an international vacation, etc.

If we could have open, honest, transparent conversations and find so much alignment in facing the practicalities of life together, why was he so unwilling to have similar open, honest and transparent conversations about us?  

I didn't expect this.

I was walking away from a line class dancing exercise class at the local park, smiling and laughing to myself about who I had run into which isn't really relevant to my story so I'm not going to get into that part.  But I was in a good mood, kind of in my own world walking back to my apartment when suddenly I was pulled out of that mood when I realized the person heading towards me was my ex-husband.

I've never had such a range of emotions run through me in such a short space in time.  He smiled at me, the kind of smile I have never seen him give anyone but me.  And as I walked past him, I realized it was a smile I hadn't seen in a long time - like so long ago, that I don't actually remember when it was.  I didn't even realize it had been missing in recent years until I saw it again this evening.

As soon as he had passed, the tears started rolling down my cheeks.  As I type this a new batch of tears fall freely.

This was a man I loved with all my heart.  If I had actually had the power, I would have done anything to fix us.  But it wasn't something within my power.  He had to want that too.  He had to be willing to put the work in too.  And he didn't.  He wasn't willing.

I don't know what I saw in his eyes and smile tonight.  I don't know what it represented tonight.  And I realize now that I don't actually know what it represented when he used to so freely look at me that way.  Was it a form of love?  Or maybe a feeling of comfort for someone he knew would hold his hand? Or what?

When you go through so many of life's ups and downs with someone, face the world together for so long, it just blows my mind that they could just walk away without even trying, without even talking.

So my heart is breaking again tonight.  I miss that look he used to give me.  I miss the way it used to make me feel.  I miss the man I married.

I defined myself too narrowly.

Yesterday evening, I gathered with three other amazing women.  The conversation flowed as if we had been long-time friends yet this was only our first gathering all together.  And time flew by so fast that the first time I checked the time was as we were getting ready to end the night, 3 hours and 40 minutes after I had arrived.

There was no place for judgment around that table.  We were just women lifting up other women, listening to each other's stories, and holding each other's hands.  I don't have adequate words for the feelings I felt in the moment.  I just knew that I had a place at that table and that it was exactly where I was meant to be.

And it was the kind of thought provoking conversations that follow me long after we have parted ways.  So this morning, the first thought in my head was about how I had boxed myself into a corner so often throughout my life.  It was insight that came out of the story of one of those women.

I don't know how often over the last months I have commented to someone that something I'm doing is so out of character or how I don't know what made me sign up for something.  There is this incongruence that I have felt between who I believe I am and who I'm proving I can be.

The divorce gave me the freedom, maybe even the encouragement to question how I have always defined myself.   I'm unravelling who I am because society pressures me to be that way, who I am because of expectations from my ex-husband, and who I am just for myself.  But my mind hasn't fully let go of that narrow view of myself and so doubt creeps in and I question how incongruent it feels at times.

So it's time to more fully let go of those limitations that I created when I decided who I was without leaving space for more.  It's time to embrace the both/and of life, the contradictory things that can be true at the same time along with all the gray space between.

And I really hope my connections with these amazing women continue to grow and that they continue to keep me thinking deeply about this world I live in.

My Transformation

It's so weird what I am going through - this transformation.  I'm stepping outside of my comfort zone.  I'm overturning ideas of who I thought I was.  I'm leaning into new experiences.  I'm separating out what was tied up in others' expectations of me vs what is aligned with my own expectations for myself.  And as I encouraged myself to do in a New Year's Day post on Threads, I'm bolding stepping into this year.  

So much of it doesn't make logical sense to me.  But it all feels so authentic and right.  And that contradiction makes it such a weird experience to be in the middle of as it is unfolding.

Today I participated in a hip hop cardio class at the park near my house.  I've never done a class like this.  I'm not particularly coordinated and I wasn't sure of how in shape I was.  But I went anyways.  I found myself a spot about two-thirds of the way back and towards one side - close enough to see what was going on but not enough to be in the spotlight.  It was a big crowd by the time the music started.  Some of the moves felt so awkward.  And I missed plenty of steps.  But I had so much fun!  

And I must have been doing something right because about half-way through the instructor looked my general direction and through her microphone yelled out the encouragement, "I see you pink shorts!"  I admit, I looked around to find the person in pink shorts only to realize it was me!  

A year ago, I would have been embarrassed to be signaled out like that.  I've always thought I'm quite introverted and thought I hated the spotlight.  But today, I just smiled and poured more energy into the dance moves.

Reading more into something than is probably there

He liked my Instagram post today.  It was of a Trillium from one of the botanical gardens in my state.  I'm not surprised he is still watching my Instagram.  It's a public account.  He is still listed as a follower and I have no interest in actually blocking him.  

It also isn't the first time he has liked a post or watched a story or made a comment about a posting in an e-mail exchange since the divorce although it doesn't happen often.  The last time was probably four or five weeks ago.

I'm not sure he particularly enjoyed our garden visits when we were together, flowers and plants weren't really his thing so it seems an odd one to like.

I'm really curious what would make him continue to follow me so closely, what goes through his head when he decides to like a post.  

Sometimes I wonder where his head is at.  Sometimes I wonder where his head was at when he decided to end it.  And it's not that I believe any good would come of talking to him and asking him - he never could be truly honest with me before so I doubt he could be truly honest with me now.  Plus I'm not sure he even always knows what's in his head.

I wonder if he continued to read my travel blog after the divorce.  I'll probably never know and it really doesn't matter.  My focus is on moving on and tonight I'm going to go find out how uncoordinated and out-of-shape I am with a hip hop cardio class.  It should be interesting....