Reflections on Two Years Post Divorce
Today marks the two year anniversary of my divorce. What a wild fucking, incredible ride this has been. Incredible is the most accurate descriptor that I can think of. The extreme highs and lows that I have experienced have been completely unimaginable. And funny enough, 2 years later, 2 years older, 2 years of single parenting, 2 years of seeing my ex-partner as nothing more than my children’s other parent, I realize that it was my imagination, the part of my being that, invigorated by hope and fear, that creates beautiful or horrific film strips in my mind, it was my imagination that has both propelled me and caused me such a great deal of harm. My imagination kept me paralyzed in a decayed marriage. Paralyzed and restrained from healing. Paralyzed by the overwhelm of what could happen: redemption or destruction. My imagination kept me in a continual state of creating fantasies that were built on unfounded hope, and catastrophizing the unfavorable possibilities until they were were so dark, that any scenario, that was less than the ideal seemed to collapse on top of me, crushing and pulverizing me into a mound of nothing.
I wish I could’ve looked into the future, two years ago, and saw everything that would come to be. I wish I would’ve known that while I was generating the horrific film strips in my mind, my physical reality was already its own kind of hell. My imagination kept me in limbo between what could never be, with hopeful fantasies, and a what could only come to be, if I did not survive what already was.
I wish I would have known that I would survive it all.
I remember asking my best friend, months after divorce, in tears “Did you expect that this is the way my life would end up?” She has known me since I was 12. I’m so grateful that even through the melodrama, she always knows how to be gentle and honest, no matter the cost, and how to meet me where I am. And after a short pause, she responded, “I knew that you wouldn’t be unhappy forever”.
It took me months to process that statement. My best friend said that to me when I was in the deepest depths of my depression. At that point, my depression, though diagnosed by my therapist, was medicinally untreated. I had called the suicide prevention hotline several times. I was the poster child for unhappy. And yet, my best friend, the only person in this world who truly sees all of me, and loves all of it just the same, could see that this devastation was the start of something that would lead to my happiness. She saw this as a pathway for me to emerge as something beautiful and powerful, something that I could not yet imagine.
When I really began considering divorce, I would have weeks were I felt cloaked in guilt and shame. I felt selfish and unloving, and I would convince myself that those things were so. My mind would fill itself with images of my children, crying and angry, and becoming juvenile delinquents. I imagined my ex-partner smiling and finding a wife who he found easy to love and was excited to spend time with. I imagined that I would become destitute. I’d see images of myself strung out on drugs. I saw myself as being without professional skills and considered if I had it in me to consider dancing or some other sex work adjacent job to make ends meet. I imagined my children, lacking the basic necessities. I imagined a long, drawn out, painful and contentious divorce. I saw myself being alone and withering away. I feared that I would lose the familiarity that I felt with my ex-partner. In a nightmare once, I dreamt that I was on the side of the road, homeless, and my ex drove by with my children in the car. He looked at me in my eyes, and drove away. I saw myself in an empty home during Christmas and Thanksgiving. I saw myself becoming an alcoholic. I saw myself taking my life.
The interesting thing, is that many of those fears that I had, have come to be. Not because I manifested it, but because they were inevitable. And I survived. My children have survived 2 years of transition. I have supported them through extra compassion and my undivided attention when they are with me and need me. I spent weeks finding a therapist who utilized play therapy to meet them where they were, and worked odd jobs and gigs to cover my part of the costs, in addition to paying for my own very expensive therapy out of pocket. I survived being alone. In fact, I realized that I prefer it. I realized that I can be alone, even on holidays. A low-key but big flex for me has been the fact that I can say, without boasting, that I have the option of having sexual partners, dating partners, relationships, sugar daddies, listen, the propositions that I get! And yet, I have such a deeply anchored contentment and admiration for myself, that I’m not letting anyone in right now to fuck that up. I feared being alone, and now I choose it. How many people are courageous enough to focus all of their spare time and energy solely on themselves? To learn themselves? To learn how to please themselves in every facet; to learn how to see themselves? To take the time to actually heal? I don’t know, but I’m one of them, and I’m damn proud of it, and proud of what I’ve discovered. I’m also incredibly proud to know that when I do feel excited about starting a relationship in the future, that I will be able to say with integrity, that I took the time to heal and to process my 11 year marriage and will be equipped to begin a new chapter with an untainted wholeness.
My ex and I sit in silence at soccer games, with my daughter bouncing between the two of us. We walk past one another at school functions like strangers. I couldn’t tell you what his face looks like anymore. We look past one another. The familiarity dissipated quickly, like morning dew on fields of grass. It looked beautiful while it was there, but once it’s gone, it’s gone. This is what I feared, and I am surviving it, perhaps thriving because of it.
We are the parents that other parents can tell are divorced. The parent of my child’s friend came up to me a few weeks ago, and asked in a whisper “You’re divorced from the dad, right?” I smiled and replied “That is true!” She looked at me in confusion at first, and then relief. She shared with me her journey and asked if we could meet for coffee. In the past 4 months, I’ve had 2 friends finalize divorces, and I’ve had 3 conversations with strangers about their temptations to leave their marriages.
In all of the conversations that I’ve had, I’ve found one common thread. We are all creating a story, of what could happen. And it’s alway fucking awful. Like fucking Friday the 13th, Candyman, Jason, Chucky, all mixed up and fucking awful.
In one conversation, I summarized to my new friend, ‘so, you’re afraid for your kids. You’re afraid of being alone and never finding love. You’re afraid that your family won’t support you. And you’re afraid of the financial uncertainty. “ She nodded.
And then I asked, “aren’t your kids already being negatively impacted by your staying in your marriage and seeing you unhappy and fighting? Aren’t you already lonely, and though married, you’re afraid that you’ll never feel loved? You said you’ve talked to your family about divorce and that they already don’t support you or your wellness now. And…y’all are already having financial struggles, sooo….”
And we stared at each other for a very uncomfortable 30 seconds. I immediately felt like I’d overstepped my bounds, because I could’ve just projected the shit out this situation. But when I found the courage to look back at her face, I saw the tears welling up. I reached across to give her hand a squeeze and felt the tears stinging in my own eyes.
Isn’t what we fear, a hyperbolic version of what we already have?
I’ve learned that my imagination can either be used to create a beautiful fucking life that guides my steps and springs into manifestation, or, a complete mind fuck that destroys any momentum and leaves me paralyzed in fear. As Friar Lawrence states in Romeo and Juliet “within the infant rind of this small flower poison hath residence and medicine power”. Yep.that’s my fucking brain. Yours too. Ready to heal or slaughter. We can imagine the worst things because we already have some experience with them. The nightmares of our lives are the amplified snapshots of our experienced discomforts and traumas. We magnify them so that we can see them a mile away and attempt to avoid them.
But, within that same flower, perhaps needing to be unearthed, is the divine longing that has been knitted into the very fabric of our creation; the longing to experience all that we are. To experience love and acceptance, and a place and a people to call home. To experience pleasure and safety and comfort and peace. To experience power. The power to imagine and to speak into being. We see the beautiful things in our imaginations and we hold on to them to create seemingly lofty dreams, because we know, no matter how deep down, we know that those beautiful things can come to be. That innate knowledge is what keeps us going, even when we don’t know how we will survive. It is what made my best friend know, without a doubt, that I would not stay unhappy forever.
The beautiful, lofty dreams that I had they, like some of the fears, have come to be. All of the beauty that I imagined came less in images and more in a desire to feel. To feel supported, seen, safe, passionately loved, cared for and protected. I never could have imagined that I would need to go through a divorce to experience my deepest needs being met. Through devastation, through the loss of my planned life partner, I found wholeness. I found my strength, and and my power, my will to live. I’m fighting the urge to say the cliche’d ‘I found myself’, because it’s not quite that…It’s that…I found the me who can create and recreate me as many times as need be. I found the divine that can seemingly turn nothing into fucking everything. And it’s all me.
I never could’ve imagined it, but It is absolutely incredible. So cheers to me on this momentous day, of surviving it all.
May you create beautiful stories of what could happen, anchored solely in the truth of your existence.
May we all be the divine creators of our own imaginations.
May we know without a doubt, that we will not stay unhappy forever.
Love, Tereva
