I haven't posted a blog in four months.
WHY?!?!?! For a writer, blogging is slightly therapeutic, right? And the way my life has been going I could use a lot of therapy. But I didn't write because I couldn't write, and I couldn't write because I have so much to say and I don't know where to begin. Sure, the beginning is the logical starting point for any story, but every time I thought I had found the beginning to start from I realized I was wrong. But I'm over trying to find the beginning, especially since I'm trying to create a new beginning for myself.
I'm getting a divorce. It's easier and easier to say that. No, I am NOT fully divorced. I am still going through it. Thankfully, my soon-to-be-ex-husband is still my friend, and not in the "we try to be friendly but we really hate each other" way. He's truly my friend. We talk to each other daily. We share custody of our children with no issue even though I have moved 1300 miles away (I'll get to that). I talk to his mother weekly. We formed an alliance against my insane family to keep them away from our children. We want each other to succeed and be happy in life. We are really friends.
I don't know where to say this divorce began (probably from before we were even married), but I do know that I began thinking about it and talking about it before our first anniversary. I know that's a hard thing for some to understand. It was hard for me to admit to myself. But I simply wasn't happy. I thought it was the newness of a marriage, owning a house, and having a new baby. I thought it would get better. I thought maybe I was holding on to some things that were petty and that I should get over.
Then we had another baby. My husband was laid off. I couldn't find a job I liked that paid me well enough in the field I'd gone to school for. Bills piled up, and we shut down. I moved 3.5 hours away for work. We drifted. We did stupid things. We didn't talk to one another about anything. We hated our lives. A lot of things happened and none of them are of consequence now because we didn't do anything to fix them then. We let them end our marriage and that was the fault of both of us. So, what do we have left but our children, respect for one another, and friendship?
We have memories. For a long time I didn't want them. I didn't know how I could reconcile my feelings with those memories. Would I ever be able to smile when I thought about the man that wrapped our babies up in blankets like little burritos? Would I always tear up when I thought of how he would make up silly songs about their socks, feet, and clothes, as he dressed them? Would I ever be ok with remembering how bad he was shaking when he placed the ring on my hand the day we married? Or how I almost put his ring on the wrong finger? Would the memories of our life together always make me feel like my heart was going to rip out of my chest?
Turns out, they wouldn't. At some point in the middle of my anger and hurt and I found solace in those memories. I realized I had not wasted my life the past five years, but rather I had been building it. It didn't go exactly like I planned, but it led me in a direction I never imagined.
I went to work one night and fell in love. I wasn't looking for it. I didn't want it. But there it was. And there was no denying I loved him after our very first conversation. The next night he kissed me after I met him for a drink. I am pretty sure the world stopped spinning for a minute. The next night he took me on a real date and before the end of dinner we were finishing one another's sentences and laughing and talking like we'd known each other forever. By the end of the week when he had to fly back to Pennsylvania, I knew I wanted to make it work with him. I went to the airport to kiss him goodbye and almost cried because I didn't know when I'd be able to see him again.
The issues? I was still living with my soon-to-be-ex-husband and he was 1300 miles away.
The next 11 weeks I spent planning to see him. We built a friendship over the phone and through email. He helped me through my anger about marrying too soon and divorcing before I was even 30, which was a huge deal to me. I didn't even want to consider marriage or kids before I was 30, and here I was at 27 with two kids and going through the separation process of the divorce. He helped me be ok with that and made me realize it was not a failure on my part. He made me want to try again.
We built a long distance relationship for 8 months, seeing each other only once a month, and then I decided to do something insane: I moved 1300 miles away from the state I love so much to be with the man I love even more. So, here I am... a GRIT trying to make things work in the north. It's not easy. I have a lot of baggage that needs to be unpacked. I have a lot of trust issues. I have a lifetime of eating great food to get over because the food here is terrible. But I'm determined to make it work.
This is the beginning for me. I'll go back and fill in gaps in future blogs, but that's everything in a nutshell. I'm going to be divorced before I'm 30, and that's ok. I'm living in a state I never imagined living in, and that's ok, too. It's also ok that I'm not working as a journalist at the moment,or that I have given up on my family ever being good people, or that I've lost a lot of friends along the way to get me here. It's ok because I'M ok, and one day I'll be more than ok. One day I'll be great. I'll be happy. I'll be me.
