I'm tired of his voice in my head.

Sometimes I wonder how long it will take to get his voice out of my head.  I was pushing my full grocery cart down the sidewalk on this beautiful sunny day and something he said last year as we were dividing up our lives echoed in my head.  In disbelief, he stated, "You aren't going to shop at Aldi?  You are going to spend so much more money going to Publix."

I haven't been back to Aldi since the separation.  First, my goal is to live a walkable more sustainable life.  I rarely drive anywhere and there isn't an Aldi within walking distance.  Second, they never had everything I wanted and so it usually required a trip to a second grocery store which I always hated.

The third reason is petty - he and his mom used to obsess and rave about Aldi like it was the greatest gift God gave to this Earth and I just can't un-hear their voices.  So for the past 13 months, I have been walking the mile with the cart I love to do almost all of my grocery shopping.

And what I have discovered since the separation is that I eat so much less than he does.  So I'm saving so much money just by not having to feed him!  Even with my fairly expensive coffee subscription and buying wine from time to time (he doesn't drink), I still have come out so far ahead!

And did you know Publix gives you flowers on the anniversary of joining their loyalty program which coincidentally for me, is late October - I remember the smile they put on my face after the divorce was final last October.  And they give you a cake on your birthday and half off a cake on your half-birthday.  That's more cakes and flowers Publix has gifted me in the last year or so than my ex-husband did throughout our entire marriage!

But back to the point, I think I'm especially irritated to be reminded of things he said like this because they always remind of how little he knew me even at the end.  He never bothered to learn who I was because he was too busy trying to push me into the image he had created in his mind of what he wanted me to be.

Am I exaggerating?

When I see people's very negative reactions to my description of a specific incident in my marriage or when I get asked was he a narcissist or when people comment that he must have been a "jerk" or a "dickhead", my first reaction is to question whether I exaggerated the incident.  Even today, after over a year of distance and processing, after seeing through his manipulations, I still believe he wasn't that bad.

And so there is this internal battle trying to figure out where perception meets reality that maybe still gives him some benefit of doubt.  How much is my mind hallucinating to try and make sense of something that doesn't make a lot of sense to me?  How much has he gaslit me into his re-written version of our relationship?  It doesn't help that although I have now realized how much happier I can be without him, I wasn't unhappy in the marriage.  You would think if it truly was bad, I would have been miserable or at least unhappy.

I try to ground myself in contemporaneous writings I've found in journals, e-mails, letters, calendars, etc. but that is still my perception and it's hard to understand how big the gap might have been between perception and reality in those moments I made those notes.  I also try to ground myself in the concrete consequences to my physical health and how it has improved over the last year, something that has been quite dramatic, but can I truly pinpoint that to a specific cause?  Correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation.

I hate the self-doubt.  I hate the struggle trying to figure out where I fall on the spectrum of how much I might have normalized some horrible behaviors vs how much I might be exaggerating how bad it was.

With Clarity comes Relief and Anger

A year ago, his behavior didn't make any sense to me.  My unconditional positive regard searched for excuses that would help me hang on to the image I had created of him in my head, that he was a good man.  It was an image created from the highs of our relationship, from what I now understand was a performance, from the way I tend to focus more on the positive than the negative.

When the end came, that performance permanently disappeared.  There was no need for him to cycle back to the highs to keep me because he no longer had a use for me.  What I was left with was a man stripped of all his masks and costumes.  Yet, I still waited for that next performance so I was confused.  

I even ended that text exchange with him about a year ago with "I don’t even know why I tried once more. I guess I keep hoping I wasn’t so wrong about you and a glimpse of the man I once thought you were would come through."  I was still trying to hold on to the man I had imagined him to be.  I didn't yet quite understand that image was just a performance.

At that time, I wasn't even willing to entertain the idea that he was intentionally or knowingly hurting me.  That would have been too big of a leap from the image I had of him, a contradiction my brain couldn't manage.

Since last year, I have gained so much clarity.  As the unconditional positive regard dissipated (very slowly!), I started to see patterns.  The extreme highs that followed the lows.  The way he ignored my simple requests.  The lack of consideration.  The one-sidedness of the relationship.  The way he blamed me for things that weren't my fault.  The love bombing as his only attempt at repairing after an argument, arguments that he always turned around on me to make it all about him.  The slow erasure.  The gaslighting.  The subtle comments he made to get me to change.  The projection.

With that clarity, his behavior in the end actually fits.  It's who he was all along.  He just masked it to varying degrees over the years to convince me to stay.

There is both relief and anger in that realization.  It is such a relief to clear out the confusion, to give my brain a rest, the fill in enough of the puzzle to start to see the image.

But I am so angry.  I'm angry at him for the deception, the manipulation, the lies, and the energy and joy he stole from me with no intention of pouring it back into me.  But maybe even more so I'm angry at myself for falling for it, for tolerating it for so long, for believing in someone who wasn't willing to deserve it, and for not listening to my doubts that went back all the way to our dating period.

This is why I'm struggling with intention right now.  I acknowledge the end result is the same.  It really shouldn't matter whether he intended to hurt me or not.  But right now it does matter to me because it has made me doubt myself and my judgment.  It has created a stumbling block where I struggle to extend grace to myself.   It has turned chaos and confusion into self-doubt.  A self-betrayal feels even worse than being betrayed by the man I was married to for 19 years.

Reaching for my missing wedding ring

Last Monday, I locked the door to my apartment and headed down the hall on my way to work and had a moment of panic that I had forgotten to put on my ring.  I actually stopped and was ready to turn around when I felt my hand and realized the ring I was looking for was my wedding ring, a ring I had taken off for the last time more than 13 months ago.

I repeated that feeling on Wednesday morning although with not quite the same level of panic.  It had been so many months since I had felt for my missing ring so it really felt off that I was suddenly looking for it again.

I'm not sure what specifically triggered it.  There has been a lot on my mind lately.  But maybe it was the social media memory from last Sunday of my visit to the labyrinth and all that I was going through a year ago.  I've written about this labyrinth before, including as recently as this past Tuesday.

A year ago last Sunday, I walked the labyrinth to prepare myself for one of the last meetings I would have with my ex-husband.  With the divorce final, we sat across from each other at a conference room in the main building of our apartment complex, each with our computers and me with a favorite mug full of water.  That mug was a safety blanket for me - something to hold on to and distract myself with through the discomfort of that meeting.

That day we did a final accounting of our joint accounts, divided the money, signed off on joint assets and debts awarded to the other, and made a list of the last few things we needed to do.  He had an agenda for that meeting, all typed out and printed, so I let him lead.  But I remember having to chime in quite a few times about things he had forgotten or didn't understand - his agenda was far from complete.  

He typed up almost every word that was said in an e-mail that he then sent me as if he needed a clear record of the meeting.  I swear he spent more time typing than talking.  I remember calmly sitting there, patiently waiting.

He proactively got on the defensive multiple times as if he thought I would try to cheat him out of something or take advantage of him.  But each time he realized I was being fair, he backed off.

He was so cold and calculated.  A stranger was sitting across from me that day.  If the man I saw that day had shown up on the first day we met, there would have been no first date.

I tried once more to get some closure with a casual statement about how fast the end had come and asked him if he felt the same.  He said no and went back to his list.

The lack of empathy from someone who not that long ago had claimed to love me.  The lack of closure even after all my attempts to communicate what I needed to make this end easier on me.  The overnight transition from best friend to stranger.  The identity crisis as I didn't know even what name I was let alone what food I liked to eat or what hotel room I would prefer.  It was all a lot and so much of it still feels unresolved.  My body seems to remember these unresolved moments each time we hit the year mark.  

This one, in particular, hits home with my struggle this week on his intentions.  Maybe the reach for my wedding ring was my body's way of reminding me what I still need to process.

A gray car - a symbol of my slow erasure

As I began my healing journey last year, I remember many conversations with friends and family where I was adamant that I had not lost myself in the marriage.  I truly believed I had maintained my own identity.  But I have now realized how incredibly wrong I was about that.  I suppose it was the very slow, subtle erasures that happened over decades that are hard to notice in the moment.  And I was still very much in the moment last year.  I did not yet have clarity.

On some level though, I started to question how much of me I might have lost as I discovered how hard it was to untangle what I knew he preferred with what I might actually want.  It started with that first grocery store trip after I moved out - I got lost in the shelves of possibilities as I bought things I had never tried before.  I remember the paralysis when I checked into my first Hilton property on their app and it asked me to select a room.  I knew what room he would want but did I really know what I wanted?  It continued as I tried out things like Improv and Hip Hop, two things I never could have imagined liking and found them to be so much fun.

And after a really enlightening moment in therapy last night, instead of making dinner at home, I grabbed my wallet and keys and walked to the restaurant next door.  We rarely went out to eat together.  It wasn't a priority for him.  He wanted to spend his money on other things.  I thought I agreed with him and made excuses about how it was more challenging with my dietary restrictions and that I wasn't a foodie.  But in recent weeks, I have learned, I really like to go out to eat.  So as I sat down last night with a glass of wine, I realized that I love sitting down at a restaurant, ordering both familiar and unfamiliar foods, getting a drink and sometimes even dessert, and being served by someone.  (After I typed this paragraph, I went and adjusted my budget so I can feel less guilty about going out to eat!)

So what really made it all click was a conversation about a gray car that I had with my therapist yesterday evening.

My first brand new car, the first car we purchased for me during the marriage was a Suburu Forester.  We bought it in about our second year of marriage.  When we bought that Suburu, we test drove both a gold one and a gray one.  The gold one had just a little higher sticker price.  As we were sitting across the desk from the sales employee, without looking at me, my ex-husband said that we would take the gray one.  

I hate gray.  Of all the colors of cars that exist, it is the one I can't stand.  So I spoke up.  After an awkward pause, the sales person responded by saying he could give us the same deal on the gold one and so ultimately that is the one we purchased.

But over the almost two decades of our marriage, my ex-husband never let me forget that.  He would remind me of the time I refused to buy a gray car and sometimes even referred to it as an "almost marriage-ending moment".  It came across as a joke but in reality it wasn't funny at all.

As I told this story to my therapist, I just casually mentioned that I drive a gray car now.  She stopped me and asked about that.  I can honestly say until that moment, I had never thought about twice about the gray car parked in my parking garage.  

We purchased this car in September of 2023 (not too many months after the May 2023 Hawaii trip which I'm starting to realize was an important turning point in our marriage).  It came down to money and what he wanted to spend our money on.  He didn't mind the color gray and so didn't want to spend extra money to upgrade it to another color.  I didn't question it because I had just absorbed his priorities with money so I also thought it wasn't wise to spend an extra $1,000 even on a color I would enjoy.  I rationalized it by saying we wouldn't keep the car long and I wouldn't drive it much.  

My therapist then asked why I took this particular car in the divorce knowing I hated the color gray.  I explained that both of our cars at that time were gray.

When we bought the other car in April of 2024, we again bought gray because he didn't want to spend the extra money on another color.  Honestly, I was so exhausted from trying to slow him down when it came to trading in our cars, that I didn't have the energy to care much what color he chose.  

I guess it is ironic that a gray car turned out to be the one that I will likely keep the longest, likely by a lot.  I think his vehicle is white now.

I walked away from this marriage with the gray car I had never wanted in those first years because he had slowly convinced me that it wasn't worth speaking up for what I wanted.  He slowly erased me until I accepted a gray car and then he left me.

Grace

Therapy was really intense last night.  There are so many different things that were said that I feel I need to process further.  I'm going to start with something really important that I had lost sight of.

For about three years of my career fairly early on, I worked directly with victims of domestic violence.   The first year and a half was mostly just through phone contact as I did intake and worked with an attorney to help them get a restraining order.  The second year and a half was physically in a domestic violence shelter and part of every day was spent in the District Attorney's office and/or courtrooms as I sat face to face with victims and walked right along side them through some really hard stuff as they tried to escape the cycle.  It was an eye opening experience.

One thing that surprised me was the fact that so many of the women I worked with were highly educated, quite intelligent, and at one point had had a strong sense of self.  These were strong, amazing, kind women.  I heard women express a lot of shame that they had fallen for the manipulation, that they had stayed, that they hadn't picked better.

Another thing I learned was how powerful manipulation can be and how damaging it is.  These women were experiencing some pretty significant manipulation on top of the physical and/or sexual abuse.  

In recent days, I have been able to see with clarity so many ways my ex-husband was manipulative and I'm still working through the damage it did to me.  I'm not trying to compare it to what victims of domestic violence went through but I need to use what I learned from working with them to give myself a lot more grace than I have been.  Honestly, I have more grace (and concern) for his new girlfriend (in her mid 40s) who I keep saying doesn't even realize what he is doing than I do for myself who was only 20 years old when I met him.

It's easy to get influenced by the online rhetoric that women just need to pick better.  And it's easy to listen to that inner voice of doubt that questions why I didn't see or chose to ignore the signs, why I tolerated what I did for so long, why I didn't know better.  But that ignores the power of manipulation and the toxic and destructive behaviors of some men.  It can't be on women to pick better.  It needs to be on men to collectively be better.  

So although it is my responsibility to learn from what I experienced so that I can try to spot red flags earlier in the future, it is not my fault that he was able to successfully manipulate and shrink me for his benefit.  It is not a reflection on me.  It is a reflection of who he is and on his character (or lack thereof).

It is in my humanity that led me to fall for my ex-husband and stay with him so long.  It is in my humanity the ways I learned to cope and grow in that relationship.  And it is in my humanity that I have approached my healing and stepped back out into the world after it ended.

Solitude, a social media memory

 

This photo from 2020 came up as a social media memory today.  When I went to reshare it and reflect on it, I discovered I had done just that a year ago and last year’s reflection was so beautiful.

October 30, 2024

I remember when I took this photo.  It was a cool, quiet evening and I walked to Railroad Park by myself, set up my tripod, and just watched as the sun set and the resident ducks enjoyed the pond.  As a silhouette, you can't see my face or any details.  I actually have my back to the camera as I gaze over the pond.  It's just the outline of me contrasted from the colors of the sky and reflection in the pond.

This image seems appropriate right now as many of the details of me seem a bit obscured, including my name as I feel a bit in limbo with all the bureaucracy that prolongs the process to make the change.  I am no longer [old name] yet I don't feel like I've fully stepped into [new name] yet.  Along with the fear of the unknown is a bit of intrigue at the details I get to fill in.

I’m in a different place today but the photo still feels impactful.  It is a reminder of the rejuvenating solitude I made time for even in my marriage.  He may have stopped joining me for most sunrises and sunsets as the years progressed, leaving an absence I definitely felt, but I kept showing up for these beautiful moments because they grounded me.  They gave me space to just exist.   They quieted my mind.  These were the moments when I felt least lonely and most like myself.

A puddle in my kitchen and hall

I walked through a puddle on the way to the bathroom this morning.  Socks wet, I reached for both the kitchen and hall light switches on the wall.  The leak had continued overnight.  

They finally replaced my dishwasher yesterday.  I came home to the sound of it running and was quite excited.  I had been without one for almost three weeks.  And then I noticed the puddle in front of the dishwasher.  Opening the cabinet under the sink, I found another puddle.  And water was seeping out from under my stove.  I wiped it up and made dinner, at which point the puddle under the sink had reformed.  

So I walked down to the office which was still open.  Neither maintenance men were on site anymore for the day but one of them agreed to come back although he was stuck in traffic so would be a while.  The plan was to just stop the leak last night and then deal with fixing the issue the today.

I went off to choir practice.  I assume he came although I noticed it still had a very slow drip when I went to bed.  I hoped it wouldn't be strong enough to cause problems overnight but here I am.

So this morning, I wiped up what I could, moved my kitchen table to make room for maintenance to get behind my stove, ate breakfast, and headed off to work. On my walk, I noticed the airplane taking off into clouds of varying density.  It disappeared and reappeared many times.  Then I paused to watch a Cooper’s Hawk perched and watching me.  And I breathed in the calm I felt.

Was it irritating to deal with a non-working dishwasher and leak?  Sure, but I did what I knew had to be done and let the rest work itself out.  I am confident I will come home to the issue under control.

But it still felt foreign.  Had I still been married, I would have woke up to his swearing and complaints.  I would have had to simultaneously soothe him while I figured out how to solve the problem.  Was I always this calm about solving actual issues or was this a skill I developed because I had to devote so much of my energy to managing him simultaneously?  The chicken or the egg?  Was it a skill I already had which played a role in sustaining the relationship for so long?  Or did his behaviors cause me to develop the skill?

So now that I don’t also have to manage him, I have extra energy to admire the birds and planes and continue on with my day, in an empty office on this thirtieth day of the shutdown.

Catio, his latest priority

Maybe I needed a laugh today.  Maybe I needed a reminder of how much better off I am.

This morning on my way to work, I walked past his patio, as I always do when leaving the complex because that is my easiest way out.  Out of the corner of my eye I saw a huge cage-like structure sitting there.  I was past it before I had time to do any processing of what I might have seen so just kept walking figuring I would take a look when I returned home and would pass it again.

What used to sit on his patio were two oversized outdoor chairs with covers.  We bought them during the marriage.  He wanted something comfy.  Personally, I would have preferred something that took up a lot less space so I could move around better on our balcony but as usual, we got what he wanted.  My studio doesn't have a balcony and I wouldn't have wanted them either way, so he took them both when we separated and placed them on the first floor patio of his new apartment.

At some point in the past year, he added a cat tree to the corner for the stray cats that have been living at our complex and started putting food out for them.  At least two of the stray cats were regularly seen perched on the cat tree or one of the chairs.

Today, one of those chairs is gone.  In its place is a large cage that faces the door to his unit and the cat tree is now inside the cage.  Maybe he got an indoor cat that he wants to be able to go outside?  Is this a catio?  One of the stray cats was sitting on the remaining chair (outside the cage).  I wondered if it missed access to the cat tree.

I walked past there one more time on my way to choir this evening and that is when the symbolism stopped me in my tracks as I laughed out loud.  If he had his door or windows open, I'm sure he heard me!  He has a girlfriend and yet he now only has one chair on his patio.  He decided to replace the second chair that his girlfriend could have sat in next to him as they enjoyed the patio with a giant enclosure for a cat!

Early on, I realized his cars would always be more important than me.  I even wrote a journal entry about that before we married.  Then early in the marriage, I learned his mom would also always be more important than me.  After we moved back to Wisconsin and he was interviewing for a law enforcement position yet refused to talk to me about how it would affect our marriage, I realized his career would always be more important than me.  And as he lived up life in Philadelphia, the city where he decided to divorce me, much of the first half of 2024, I realized his freedom would always be more important than me.  Even his comfort was always more important than working through conflict to benefit us as a couple.  I was such a low priority, I'm not even sure I made the list.

Now, the cats have added one more level of priority that I'm sure will always be above any girlfriend he ever has.

He clearly hasn't changed at all.  And he is not my problem anymore!

Labyrinth

I've written about this labyrinth before here (which links to my other posts on this topic).  On my lunch hour today, I walked the path of the labyrinth and then sat down in the middle to pause.

The walk requires concentration as the path twists and turns.  It requires forgiveness as I stumble and step outside the lines on a tight curve.  It allows me to relax along the gentle long curves.  It reminds me of the larger picture in life without losing sight of the importance of focusing on the moment.  It grounds me in the present as I completely black out the cars traveling above or the skateboarders doing their tricks next door until I reach the end.

It has served so many purposes throughout my healing journey which is why I keep coming back.

Intention

We still have a couple of joint e-mail accounts that we both have access to monitor because from time to time important things still show up there.

Last week Thursday, he added his girlfriend to a cruise scheduled for February and paid off that cruise which resulted in a series of e-mails to one of those joint accounts.  I wrote about that in this post.  Those e-mails are still sitting in the inbox today of our joint account.

Since then, he has taken the time to delete the Walgreens receipt where he bought cosmetic products for his girlfriend and the series of Zillow e-mails where he looked at a property in Wisconsin.  But he left those cruise e-mails.  It feels like he wants me to see them, like he wants to see if he can rub salt in wounds.

My recent reflections have made me wonder how intentional his behaviors were during our marriage.  I honestly am starting to wonder where he falls far on the narcissistic spectrum.  So in light of these thoughts, this feels intentional.

It also makes me think back to that Friday morning after my family cruise on the ship where we were married when I saw him on his patio with his new girlfriend.  I had a passing thought that it was intentional - he knew exactly when I left for work but dismissed that thought quickly.  I wonder if I shouldn't have dismissed it so quickly.

But maybe the last laugh is on him.  Seeing these e-mails doesn't create jealousy in me.  It doesn't make me miss him.  It doesn't even remind me of the good in our marriage.  

A four night cruise is barely a vacation compared to 28 days of cruising I have booked for the next two years plus a week and a half trip to national parks and time in both Paris and London.  It doesn't compare the full community of friends I have built.  It doesn't compare to the interest the Atlanta district has in me should they ever be able to hire more staff.  It doesn't compare to the confidence I have gained in Improv, hip hop, poetry workshops, and more.  I have created a life infinitely better than the one we had together.  

The effect of seeing this is not about him at all.  It's a reminder of the way he manipulated me and how he is now doing the same to his next victim.  It is a feeling of empathy for her.  And if he is still feeling the need to try and hurt me, it reflects an emptiness that is still in him.  I wasn't the cause of his unhappiness.  He did that himself and will continue to do that himself until he actually puts in the work to heal.  A new girlfriend or a new car or a trip to the Bahamas won't fix that.

Parallels in a friendship

Before I went to bed after my date with myself a week ago, I posted about it on social media.  Almost immediately, I got a text from that friend who has been mostly missing the last year plus.  I wrote about that friendship ten days ago here.  She started her message with "So sorry I missed checking in on you on this important day" as if she would have had any way to know ahead of time it was my divorce anniversary.  I guess a close friend would have known.

She then went on to ask if we could go out for lunch on Friday to celebrate.  Even if I'm not really investing in the friendship anymore, I still do enjoy spending time with her so I agreed to meet her.

The lunch on Friday felt different though.  I could sense she felt guilty about not being there for me.  She almost scolded me for not texting her on Tuesday and didn't understand why I didn't want to celebrate my divorce anniversary with friends.  I think she recognizes she is no longer my closest circle.  This lunch felt a bit like a desperate attempt to hold on.

At one point she referenced talking to her daughter about relationships and waiting to get serious as if that was the cause of my divorce but then went on to say she was torn with that advice because of how lonely she felt when she was single - she married in her 30s.

She repeatedly told me how she has admired how I have handled myself this past year, it's become a repeated refrain each of the times I've seen her.  I'm not sure it even feels like a compliment anymore.  I have begun to wonder if there is jealousy behind it.  It's always followed by something along the lines of  "I don't know what I would have done."

I find myself explaining more than I should need to and then when I realize it, pulling back and going quiet.  I don't think she intentionally tries to misunderstand me like my ex-husband did but the feeling of being misunderstood feels the same.  

She also spent time talking about how overwhelming life is for her.  Her kids need this.  Her church needs that.  Her neighborhood needs this. Her family needs that.  And in every single scenario, there is absolutely no one else who can or would step up to do these things that she thinks need to be done.  Her husband is clearly exhausted as well as he has started to set limits on how many activities he will help get the kids to (he thinks she signs them up for too much).  

We have this same conversation every single time - different obligations she has created for herself but the same overwhelming feeling.  And each time, the conversation is no less exhausting as she looks to me for validation, reassurances, encouragement, etc.  I reflect, going back six years, as I held her oldest daughter as an infant and successfully soothed her crying, something my friend was struggling with at the time.  At the same time, I was reassuring my friend that she was doing a great job as a mom.  She has that same exhausting need for repeated validation and so many reassurances my ex-husband demanded.  

During Friday's lunch, she leaned on her Enneagram type (3) to excuse her need to be seen as useful and to compete not understanding that the point of the Enneagram isn't to lock into a box of your type but to help you understand how to use your starting point to expand yourself.  My ex-husband used the excuse of "this is just how I am".

So I left Friday's lunch feeling unsettled, even a bit triggered.  There was a time when I felt so at ease with this friend.  From the moment we first met, she felt comfortable.  We even did some travel together, first sharing a cabin for a church retreat, then renting a cabin in the Smoky Mountains together.

What if that comfort had less to do with it being a good friendship and more to do with being a parallel to all I knew in my marriage?  Something familiar even though it may not have been very healthy.  And now that I've come so far in my healing, I feel that old familiar energy interfering with my growth.  But it makes me so sad because I really like her as a person.

He claimed he deserved "better treatment/more affection".

A year ago tomorrow, I had a breakdown as I ran into difficulties at work with my name change and was being told I wouldn't have the capabilities to telework while the process was happening which would likely be quite a few weeks.  I was also trying to figure out how to vote with my voter registration in my old name (and being too late to update voter registration for the presidential election) and having already started the name change process.  All the ways the burden of the divorce was falling unfairly on me were weighing me down to the point of collapse.  I didn't understand how he could create so much damage and escape seemingly unharmed.

This was two days after we sat down in a conference room at our apartment complex to close out accounts and split our remaining assets now that the divorce was final.  He was so cold and lacking any emotion at that meeting.  Afterwards I remember commenting to myself that I suspect he treated the taxpayers he audited with more warmth than he treated me that day.  He gave more consideration to strangers on the street than he did to me at that point.

In my moment of weakness and against my better judgment, I texted him.  I can still picture myself in my office with tears flowing down my cheeks as I typed into my phone.  This was our text exchange.

Me:

Do you have any clue how much of a nightmare everything associated with this divorce has been for me? Do you have any idea how much your dishonesty has cost me? Do you even care? The latest is that I will not be able to telework while I wait for a new PIV. I’m also trying to figure out how to still be able to vote in the name of my voter registration as I am in the middle of changing my name back.

The worst part is that I still don’t understand what happened and why you did this and you clearly have no interest at all in trying to figure out or articulate the why to help me find any closure. To leave a spouse after two decades with that much confusion is really cruel.

His response:

Why I decided to leave is like I have said before, I was not happy, I couldn’t see us working on things enough to get there, I feel like I deserve better treatment/more affection and I let resentment build up for so long past the point of return (which I regret). I am very sorry for all the difficulties.

Me:

Just think about how little that explanation would make sense to your spouse after not speaking up for 19 years. Just think about how it feels to be blamed for something you weren’t aware of (and I’m still not aware of). And based on the very few examples you have given, be blamed for your reaction to the other person’s poor behavior without any self-reflection on their part. Think about how that would completely shatter your sense of reality and ability to trust. Maybe if you could actually self-reflect on that you would realize how little closure your explanation brings and how many gaps there clearly are in that explanation.

You don’t need to respond any further. Clearly you still aren’t able or willing to have an honest conversation that would bring a little integrity to how this is all ending. I don’t even know why I tried once more. I guess I keep hoping I wasn’t so wrong about you and a glimpse of the man I once thought you were would come through.

I wrote in my blog on that day, "My text this morning accomplished nothing except further rile me up."  I laugh today at the truth of that!

Besides a few logistical texts and one meeting at the courthouse to sign over our titles to each other, we had no other contact after that.  So this is the last explanation I got.

His word that he deserves "better treatment/more affection" have repeated in my mind ever since because they never made sense to me.  It's as if that text is burned in my mind.  That is the only time he ever accused me of not being affectionate enough and it felt so hypocritical as so often he pushed away any attempts I made to be affectionate and he was rarely affectionate with me.  And I had no clue what he meant by better treatment but I knew the way he was ending it was horrible treatment of me.  So for someone who believed he deserved better, he was being pretty hypocritical.

It was also the closest I ever got to an apology from him.  And no, it's not actually an apology.  I also didn't believe he meant it.  From the first moment I read that text, it sounded like him just telling me what he thought I wanted to hear.  It felt so incredibly empty.

So why am I back here, stuck in this moment today?  Sometimes I think my body remembers these anniversaries.  I've been in a funk ever since yesterday.

My social media memory yesterday was walking the labyrinth in my city a year ago to get myself in the right headspace to have that meeting with him.  I wrote a poem that compared the walk through the labyrinth to the rhythms of what I was facing - the moments of insecurity as I navigated tight turns, the moments of confidence when I picked up the pace around a gentle curve, the understanding of the overhead view of it all mixed with the uncertainty of the moment by moment view, and the concentration required to just keep putting one foot in front of the other.  I wanted to go back and re-walk the labyrinth yesterday after church but the rain combined with the cooler temperatures and long walk convinced me to stay home.  Maybe later this week.

And my thoughts over the past day or two have been centered on the ways he used the highs and lows to manipulate me and how the gaslighting at the end erased the highs.  So I think this text that keeps repeating in my mind hits differently now.  He had erased the highs by this point and rewritten our story to make himself the victim of my alleged poor treatment which he couldn't even explain in words to me.  A year ago, that created nothing but confusion and doubt.  Today, it feels like part of a larger plan to manipulate me and evade accountability.

Anger

I'm not myself tonight.  I'm feeling bitter and angry.  I feel like I wasted two decades of my energy and joy on someone who wasn't willing to be a partner who was worth it, someone who manipulated me to get me to stay instead of just showing up.  He could have just left me the fuck alone if he didn't want to show up as a decent human being.

And then for him to end it by putting all the blame on me, re-writing our story to make him out to be the victim and me the villain, and then running out the door so he didn't have to actually explain or take any accountability.

I didn't deserve this.  No one does.

So I'm really angry at him tonight, maybe more angry than I have ever felt.  

It only took me 15 months to have enough clarity to see through his manipulations and the destructive effect it had on my energy, my joy, my nervous system, my physical health, and my sense of self.  

How can someone do that much destruction to another human being and still sleep at night?

His intentions and trusting my judgment

I think what I'm struggling with right now is that with more clarity, I question whether he was actually doing all these subtle things to intentionally hurt me, control me, etc.  It's the difference between someone with strong narcissistic traits vs someone who is insecure, lacks self-awareness, and has refused to heal his unhealed trauma.  Although maybe those two things are one and the same.  

In my mind for the past year and a half, I had convinced myself he wasn't intentionally hurting me, that he just didn't know any better and didn't have enough self-awareness to do better.  I suppose to believe he was intentionally hurting me was a greater incongruence with the image I had created of him than to believe he was just inconsiderate and didn't know any better.

But then I ask myself why does it matter?  The end result is the same.  The damage to my nervous system and physical health, the chaos and confusion happened regardless of his intentions.  

I think I wrestle with this because it calls into question my judgment.  Although instead of worrying about his intentions which I will never know, maybe my focus needs to be on the patterns that allowed me to ignore the signs I should have paid attention to.

I think the extreme highs and lows, an overall inconsistency created two dynamics that convinced me things were better than they were.  Most obviously, the highs were full of detailed love notes, attention, concrete future planning, doing things that were more for me like the trip to the Galapagos, and confidence from him about us as a couple.  In hindsight, they sometimes were even over-the-top.  These highs gave me something to hold onto even during the lows.

Then in the lows, he needed constant reassurance.  This constant reassurance which I provided him served a purpose in convincing me of how solid of a relationship I imagined we had.  In my experience, the more I say something, the more I believe it even if it doesn't quite match with reality.  And that's not that I didn't ever believe the reassurances I gave him but because I repeated them so often there wasn't space for me to see when my reality was changing.

A shift happened though last year because I didn't really try to convince him to stay when he came back from his work trips questioning our relationship.  It was as if I was done reassuring him.  I wasn't ready to be the one to leave myself.  I wanted answers from him on what the hell had happened to make him suddenly want to leave.  I wanted closure.  But I was done doing the work to keep our relationship together.  I even said that out loud when he suggested couple's counseling.  I wasn't willing to go through couple's counseling again with the focus just on me and what I needed to change.  It was his turn if he wanted this relationship to survive.

I wonder if that shift happened even earlier, maybe after I saw the way he treated me on our Hawaii trip.  That trip was May of 2023.  I was pissed at how that trip went.  I remember sitting in the back restaurant at a table for two against the windows, sipping a latte, watching a rainbow appear above the ship's wake and noticing the seat across from me was empty.  That image has stuck with me as representative of that overall trip and maybe even what our relationship had become.

And if that shift did happen earlier, he likely sensed it.  Maybe that is why he left.  Maybe he realized I wasn't tolerating his BS anymore.  I hadn't considered that the end may have started with me and the fact that I was starting to listen to my good judgment again.

A way he made my life harder

We used to keep the empty laundry baskets on a shelf that was just over my shoulder height.  He would leave them all stacked together and pile used towels in the top one.  When it came time for me to do laundry, I would struggle to lift them all and get to the empty baskets I needed to help me sort.  Over and over, I asked him put the towels in an unstacked basket next to the stack of empty ones (there was room for both) explaining how much I struggled but he never "remembered".  He acknowledged the request each time but never changed his behavior.

I don't know why this crossed my mind today.  Maybe because I'm puzzling all the little ways that I made his life easier or more enjoyable, all the ways I paid attention to his wants and needs, and the only examples I can come up about him are ways he made my life harder.  I had forgotten about this example until this evening.

My mind is finally catching up to my body

I think my mind is finally catching up to my body but it is a surreal experience.

Last summer when it was all still uncertain, I couldn't eat.  I couldn't sleep.  My chronic pain was flaring up.  I was dealing with night sweats.  My period was a bit off.  This uncertain transition time really wrecked havoc on my body as if it was one ultimate, final flareup.  Mentally I was so confused, heartbroken, and lost.  I can't even count the miles I walked throughout my city to try and escape the pain I was experiencing.   And it was mental gymnastics to make sense of what my ex-husband was telling me.  So little of it made sense to me which I realize now was because he was gaslighting me.

And then in July of last year when he told me he was done and started contacted attorneys, I still wasn't eating or sleeping but my energy level went through the roof. I suddenly had it in me to socialize and get out in ways I had not in twenty years.  Even though he was living in the same apartment as me still, there was a relief in not having to cater to him, soothe him, manage his emotions, etc. that let me reclaim my energy.  Mentally, I was alternating between survival as I figured out all the practical next steps and feelings of complete whiplash - what I thought at the time was a good marriage had dissolved overnight without an apparent reason.  But despite that mental overload, I was out living life.

Then the joy came back.  I danced in the rain.  I bought myself inexpensive but meaningful pieces of jewelry.  I traveled.  I started saying "yes" to anything that I thought might even remotely be interesting or fun.  This is where the fun in my journey began.  Amidst even the most challenging times I was in awe as I watched myself transform.

Then sometime in the fall my appetite came back and the rapid weight loss plateaued.  And I wasn't experiencing many moments of chronic pain anymore.

In November, I drove home to spend a week with my family at Thanksgiving.  That first night in my childhood bedroom (although it has been completely redecorated so doesn't feel like the same space I grew up in) was the first night I really slept.  And it was the first night of many to come.  Although I still occasionally have some restlessness sleeping, I haven't had those sleepless nights of last year since before that November week at home.

And then I realized how infrequently I've needed to take any sort of heartburn medicine since moving out.  It used to be that I had to regularly take those 14 day treatments because Tums or Pepcid weren't enough.  I haven't needed that in over a year.

And then this past spring and summer, I watched the inhibitions completely fade away as I moved my body in silly ways in Improv and danced in a hip hop cardio class.

My body had come that far.  My nervous system had settled down.  And yet I was still hanging onto what I thought was the good in him.  I was still trying to make sense of what happened by making excuses for him.  I did not yet understand that the improvements in my physical health and the soothing of my nervous system were evidence of the damage he had done to me over two decades and my body's way of celebrating his absence.

I still don't think I was there yet when I boarded the ship we had been married on twenty years early this past June.

In late August, I had my annual well woman visit which included a pelvic exam and Pap smear.  With my chronic pelvic pain, pelvic exams had generally been quite painful in the past.  This was a new provider so I talked with her about my concerns but also that I was aware my chronic pain had been improving since the divorce.  She stated that she has seen patients whose pelvic pain significantly improved after a divorce because of the effect of stress.  That pelvic exam was painless!

In mid-September, I saw myself in his new girlfriend.  I saw the way I physically carried myself.  I saw the lack of energy or glow.  I saw myself shrink.  This was so eye-opening, a huge turning point.

That day, I went back and looked at photos of myself and I was stunned at what I saw.  I don't think I ever posted that here.  I know I made a Facebook post about it with three photos of me all from late September/early October of the years 20223 (when I thought I had a good marriage), 2024 (after the separation but before the divorce) and 2025.  On that post, I labeled them:  Oblivious -> Grieving -> Joyful.

2023 - During a solo trip to Washington DC - even a few days away from him didn't re-energize me.

2024 - at the lantern festival, something I did that was important in my healing

2025

So now we come to today.  And if you read my post from last night, my mind has gained so much clarity on the subtle ways he was affecting my nervous system as he encouraged me to shrink myself and conform to the image he had of me.  It may have taken a very long time, but I think my mind is finally catching up to what my body knew all along.

Dancing to Uptown Funk

I added Uptown Funk to my playlist and played it this evening.  My feet began to move as I danced around my apartment, all my inhibitions replaced by pure joy.  The thought crossed my mind this week that a day doesn't go by that I don't sing and dance in my apartment, or as I walk the empty halls at work, or as I scooter through the park and soar down the hill under the railroad bridge.  I don't even need music to find my body moving to a tune only I can hear in my head.

He didn't like how I danced.  He claimed I only had one move.  He thought I was clumsy.  And the ways he told me this were subtle, with a tone that sounded kind, just a casual comment that barely was heard.  But it was enough to get me to stop dancing.  Even if he hadn't rushed me out of the room every time the first beats of Uptown Funk played, I wouldn't have felt free to dance to it when we were together.

He didn't dance himself.  He said he wasn't any good at it.  I don't know if that is why he didn't want me dancing.

So tonight I danced to it freely.  I even played it a second time.  And it now holds a place on my frequent playlist.

I can't believe I just didn't know.  I couldn't see the small ways he slowly encouraged me to make myself smaller.  He did the same thing to get me start shaving my legs.  He never would outright tell me what he wanted or what he expected.  It would be little comments, always with a tone that felt like kindness, until I decided on my own to do what he wanted.

When he first met me, it wasn't uncommon to see me in wearing that didn't quite match, at least according to fashion standards.  I wore what I wanted, combined the colors and fabrics that felt good to me, and didn't even think about what others might think.  Overtime, more and more of me matched - shoes, watchband colors, hair accessories until all the mismatching was erased.  In more recent years, he even joked about it.  I hadn't considered that it was his worldview and subtle comments that caused the change he was joking about.  Image meant everything to his family.

Yesterday, I put on light blue and red puffin socks with a busy green patterned jumpsuit.  I will admit I paused for quite a moment knowing they didn't match.  And then I reached for my Mary Jane shoes so everyone would see the socks!

I didn't even remember some of these changes and how they came about until I started dancing in my kitchen to Uptown Funk.  I'm coming to see I lost more of myself than I ever realized in this marriage.  

This year has felt so drastic and I didn't understand why.  While I was in the midst of it all, I couldn't see the ways I was being erased and made smaller.  And then I was suddenly free of it all.  I don't think I knew what to make of it at first.  To be able to do what I wanted, when I wanted, where I wanted, with the sole source of my inhibitions completely gone.  And sure plenty was quite ingrained but his absence was louder than those ingrained inhibitions.  

And so I danced in that first rain storm which occurred before I had even moved out.  He had gone to Wisconsin for two weeks right after telling me he would be contacting a lawyer about filing a divorce.  I went for a walk one evening when rain clouds threatened.  And halfway through the park, the skies opened up.  The rain pelted me so hard it stung my face.  But I danced, I raised my face to the sky, and I felt more alive than ever as the rain washed over me.  

After that, each time that I listened more to the loudness of his absence, the ingrained inhibitions grew smaller and smaller.  And maybe someday, hopefully soon, I won't sense his disapproval at all anymore.

Anger this morning

I am spitting mad this morning, swearing in the shower kind of angry, as I can feel my heart racing and am sure my blood pressure is rising.

When he suddenly (from my perspective) announced he wanted a divorce last year, we had six cruises booked, several with nonrefundable deposits.  He had one foot out the door while he was still spending our money on future trips, he had to know we might not take.

We lost the $400 deposit completely on one that would have happened last week.  That's $400 he threw away.  But that's not even the one that has me so angry this morning.

We had another one booked that he decided to move the deposit to another cruise.  That one had a $500 deposit plus a $100 change fee he paid before we divorced (so I'm pretty sure even that $100 was marital money).  In hindsight, we never added this to the balance sheet so this is free money he got.  At the time, I figured the money was a loss because I didn't actually believe I would be able to afford to cruise in the timeline it would need to be used by.  (I'm really glad I was wrong about that assumption!)

So combined that was $1000 of marital money that was a complete loss to me, money I never would have agreed to spend if he had been honest with me.

Last night and this morning, a slew of e-mails from Celebrity Cruises showed up in one of our joint e-mail accounts.  He added his girlfriend to that cruise where he moved the deposit.  Almost half the cost of that cruise was paid for with marital money.  So in essence, he is using (in part) my money to manipulate his next victim.

And this comes on the heels of information I learned that he took her and her two daughters to see Kamala Harris speak when she was in town last week.  He would not have had interest in hearing her speak on his own.  He actually disagreed with me about her run the last election.  He didn't like to talk politics much so when he spoke up, I feel like those were moments I actually saw the real him.  Those were moments that were a break from what I suspect was him mirroring me and what I wanted to hear.  So I am quite confident he did this just to impress her, to get her attached so he has a continued source of validation.

And maybe this hits me a bit harder right now because I've been reflecting a lot on the way he mirrored me and the other people in his life.  I'm seeing with clarity how much in each varying situation, he tried to become the person that would be liked, chosen, appreciated, validated, etc. without any sincerity or authenticity or true reciprocity.  And it bothers me that I didn't see it before.  Even if I was blinded by infatuation and immaturity in the beginning to see it in my own relationship with him, it should have become quite clear as I started observing his relationships with others.  

As the relationship ended last year and I started making something out my life, I realized he and I were very different in how we responded to life.  He lets the wind blow him where it may and complains about where the wind sets him down whereas I pull out my parachute to find some direction and then make something good of wherever I ultimately landed.  

I think this difference is also clear in the image he presents to the world.  He lets the world decide who he is as currency to extract from others what he needs and wants.  Every "gift" he gave was with an expectation of something in return, a way to manipulate others to get what he wanted.  In contrast, I stand as my own person, look internally for a lot of what I need and want and have built a community of reciprocal relationships where I don't have to manipulate people to step up.  They just do because they like the authentic person I am.  And I do the same for them, not expecting anything in return, but just because I like them and care about them.

Getting to the bottom of this blog post, I now feel that my heart rate is returning to normal.  It's amazing how my writing can do that.  To fill a page with all the negative emotions and organize them in a way I can understand and let go.  Re-reading the two paragraphs right above this one, I realize that lost $1000 is so worth what I have gained from losing him.  And the integrity that is reflected in my actions and the way I do my best to treat people matters far more.  And his girlfriend is an adult who can take care of herself.

Uptown Funk and an instinct to flee

There was a party in the street downtown this evening.  As a scootered by, the song "Uptown Funk" was playing.  Laughter bubbled up over me as I slowed my scooter down to listen as I passed.  I wonder if that song will ever not make me stop everything and pause.

I spent my marriage running from the song, literally.  He hated that song more than just about anything.  I don't even know why.  And you wouldn't believe how often it gets played at events!  It would just take the first beat and we would be hurrying out of the room.  I can even picture the way he would often cover his ears as we left.

I never understood why but I also didn't question it.  I just saw it as a quirk of his that I didn't need to understand to accommodate.   I do wonder though now all that I missed every time we ran out of the room.

The first time I heard it after the separation was last October.  They played it on the night small boat tour I took as we sipped rum drinks and made our way back to the cruise ship after exploring a shipwreck in the Bermuda Triangle.  He wouldn't have been able to escape that one!  That was probably the first time I got to hear the song all the way through.

I heard it again at the Orange Party on the late June/early July cruise.  I admit that I had a moment instinct to flee.  It was that ingrained and I wasn't confined like the small boat tour last October.  But then I realized I didn't have to and I raised my glass and weaved my way deeper into the crowd.

This evening I laughed in joy to be able to stop running.