Two years ago today I filed for a divorce after almost twenty-two years of marriage. Every single day since that day has been a wonderful gift of renewal.
Oh, there have been plenty of horrible and difficult days -- and there still are a few, but they are now blissfully few and far between -- especially between the day I filed and the day he actually moved out, which was twenty-one long days later (hmmmm, interesting -- I just this second realized that the number of days I had to endure his presence after filing was the exact same number of years I spent married to him -- and oddly enough, twenty-one was also the age I was when I married him, so clearly twenty-one is NOT my lucky number).
The divorce was a long time coming, and it was something that I should have done years and years ago, but we all know the clarity of hindsight, and I can't go back and fix that particular mistake. If it weren't for the two great kids I got out of the marriage, I'd say that the entire marriage was a bust and something I never should have done, but because of them, I'll never say it was a complete waste of twenty-one years of my life.
The two years since I filed, though, have by far been the best years I've spent since I was a little kid with no worries dragging me down. The worries and the stress of life are the things that suck the joy out of living, and when I was married to him, my every waking day was totally filled with worry and strife, so once I eliminated him from my day-to-day life, a lot of my joy-killing stress went right out the door with him.
Naturally, I still have stress and worries in my life, but now they come from the places they should naturally arise, like work and bills. Now, I come home to a stress-free house; back then, I avoided coming home because this is where my stress level became instantly compounded the moment he walked in the door.
In the past two years, I have received so many compliments (sometimes daily even) about how happy I seem and how I appear younger and how I look healthier. That's because I am all these things. Once he left, I could physically feel the load coming off my shoulders, and the constant knot of pain I'd carried around at the base of my neck between my shoulder blades disappeared within weeks and hasn't returned at all. I started losing weight without even trying simply because my life had joy in it again, and this wasn't because I had been a mindless snacker or a junk food junkie while I was married but rather that I was now eating the good stuff that people are supposed to eat and not striving (unsuccessfully at every attempt) to please an ungrateful man who would only eat red meat and potatoes meals full of fat and carbohydrates. I quickly lost fifteen pounds and have kept it off for the past two years, and I'm actively working to shed a few more, but I'm not obsessing over it.
Sometimes it is really hard for me to not be angry with the financial load I was left to carry as a result of the divorce -- all of it a result of his overspending on his horses -- and not to be bitter at the large chunk of my teacher's retirement money he was awarded -- all of it from my hard work after years spent in a classroom -- , so when I have those bad moments or days when I'm feeling depressed about the debt I am left to bear, I remind myself that at least now I am slowly but surely getting a handle on it. During the marriage, he just mindlessly spent and spent and got loan after loan and let things continue to spiral completely out of control, and he purposely left me out of the loop and hid those things from me, but he was more than happy to let them all fall on my shoulders in the divorce. He managed this because I'm the responsible one with the stable and steady career, and since he was "willing" to walk away and "let" me have everything, the court then stuck me with the check, so to speak. It will be years and years and years before I am free of this load, but I'm free of him, and that is worth more than money to me -- that, in fact, is worth everything.
Despite the crushing debt I was left to manage, I am striving very hard to help my son as much as possible with his college expenses. I also bought myself a Harley-Davidson even though financially speaking, I shouldn't have. However, mentally and emotionally speaking, it was something I needed to do partly because of the debt I'd been stranded with. I knew that the debt had me in its grip for the next twenty to thirty years and by then, I'd be either very old or very dead, and my dream of once again owning a motorcycle would be either physically out of my league by then or dead alongside of me. That's a depressing thought, and my life post-divorce is about not living a depressing life, so I got myself a bike to enjoy as much as possible for as long as possible. Time will tell if it was worth it, and if it proves not to be, then I'll sell the bike and remove that much from my debt pile at least.
I do have the house, and prior to the divorce, the mortgage was almost paid off. Since the divorce, I have paid it off, but sadly I now owe more on it from his horse debt than I ever owed on the mortgage -- and I, and I alone, paid off the mortgage; he never paid a single dime toward this house, not a single dime. I could sell the house, but at the moment, I wouldn't get enough for it to pay off what I owe, so I'd then have no home and no money to start over somewhere else. For the time being, I will stay here and pay down the debt, so that when I do sell the house, I can at least break even. That is a few years down the road which coincides well with my daughter completing high school first before I set off on a new path.
However, the fact that I can plan for a future elsewhere and doing something else is another benefit from getting divorced. While there are plenty of good things about living in a small town in Nebraska, there are also plenty of bad things about it, and I'm ready for a change -- a change of scenery, a change of weather, and a change of opportunities. I'll bide my time for three more years, but during that time, I'll make plans for the next chapter in my life, and I'll be thankful every single day that I have the opportunity now for a next chapter.
In these past two years, I've learned to love again. I've had three relationships with men. The first could easily be considered that rebound relationship that we all seem to need to get us back on our feet. It didn't last long, and he clearly wasn't the right sort of guy for me, but I appreciate the time we spent together because he showed me that there are plenty of men out there looking for a woman to treat well. The next man was someone I spent a whole year with, and he was very nice, but in the end, our differences split us up. Again, I have no hard feelings toward him, and I am grateful for all our days together as he was there for me during the really hard part of the divorce trial time period, and he was the rock I needed in my life at that time. Currently, I am with a man who complements me in ways that no other man ever has because he is very smart, as am I, so our conversations alone keep me spellbound. I feel that I will spend a very long time with this man, and although I'm not keen on marriage anymore, I wouldn't completely rule it out with a man like him. Again, time will tell, but for now, he adds to the joy I feel every single day.
When I look back at this day two years ago when I was sitting in a lawyer's office making the hardest, and yet the easiest decision of my life, I am astounded at how far I've come internally. My outlook on life has completely changed. I awake every day and say "thank you for another day without him in my life" because I know that no matter the problems I have to face that day, they don't compare to the ones I lived with every single day for over twenty years.
While I often regret ever getting married, there hasn't been nor will there ever be a day in which I regret getting divorced.
