Yesterday a friend of mine sent me a text that said,
“If I get a divorce will I be okay?”
She is in that particularly bad place where her marriage
could go either way and she is living in that unstable place.
First, there is nothing as bad as that place.
Divorce is not as bad as that place.
I replied, “Sure! You will be fine. You are just thinking about
your worst case scenario, but worst case is you will be fine!”
I was frustrated as hell, but it wasn’t divorced frustration.
It was patient frustration and traffic frustration and sick kid frustration.
Also, there was a bit of ‘stupid long distance relationship’ frustration thrown in.
But most days now, I feel happy and powerful and okay about my divorce.
Then I saw this post on a friend’s page on FB.
HAPPY 20TH ANNIVERSARY! I’m really happy that you and daddy are still together, I can’t tell you how happy I am to have two parents that are still together and love each other. Thank you so much for doing everything you do, and here’s hoping the next 20 years are even better than the first.
It was from her 15 year-old son.
It made me feel like shit.
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| Facebook may be the devil. |
Then the grief sneaks back.
It is like a fucking Merry-Go-Round the grief to me.
It has flashing lights and is obnoxious.
I know all about grief and the cycles of grief.
I am a certified grief counselor.
La Di Da.
I know not to expect it to be over quickly
and that I will always feel sadness about my divorce.
But sometimes I just want to say a permanent
goodbye and fuck you to the Merry- Go- Round.
Yes, she can do it. She will reach a time where she knows she needs to do it, or she will stay, but if she needs to, she can do it.
The cycles of grief never cease to amaze me – just when I think I’m absolutely 100% fine, something will hit me out of the blue and send me into a little tailspin. However, my tailspins are less and less frequent, and fewer and fewer things cut deep when it comes to divorce.
My parents have been married for 44 years. They are madly in love to this day. My father says that the best thing he ever did was marry my mother, and that everything good in his life came from that decision; my mother looks at my father like he is Superman. I live with the knowledge that I can not give my daughter the same.
However…..
I’m okay. My daughter is okay. Actually, much better than okay. I stress about job stuff, not divorce stuff.
I think that your grief-merry-go-round is intensified because you live in the same house as Stanley. I can not tell you how much easier it was to be single when I was no longer cleaning up after someone who disrespected me and treated me like a maid. He lives in his own filth now, hasn’t changed a bit, but now I see it from a distance and from that distance it is so much more tolerable! It made it easier for me to stop spinning. Certainly we can’t claim that dirty dishes were the source of either of our divorces, but removing them from the equation has certainly helped to keep the peace, in my case. 🙂
All too true. All of it. I never grieve him really. But i do grieve my kids not having us both. And yes there is a sink full of dirty dishes and the floors are a mess and there is a huge bucket of hops in the kitchen. I am still dealing with that. Ick.
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