Not the piercing pain. Or the perpetual confusion. And definitely not the ever-vigilant fear.
But the constant reminder of what really matters.
And what is just noise.
It was like the trauma itself acted as a filter. In order for something to register, it had to be at least as loud as the pain.
And that left quite a bit disregarded on the floor, rated as unimportant compared to the major life themes coursing through my mind on a daily basis.
I found myself surprised by some of the experiences that did register. A respite in the February sun trilled louder than my keening. Appreciation for a surprise snack of succulent fruit sounded above the din of my panicking brain. I accepted invites without hesitation, regardless of what tasks needed to be accomplished by some pressing deadline.
I have allowed myself to forget this lesson.
With no filter in place to separate the critical from the inconsequential, I have permitted the noise to deafen me.
My divorce certainly did not present itself as a gift, trussed up with a big red bow like a Lexus in a Christmas commercial. Instead, it was a big ugly box, filled to the brim with explosives. It was a present I never anticipated and one I never desired. But, as it came with a “no return” policy, I was determined to make the best of it. From Rewrapping Divorce As a Gift
When you are facing down the bullet train of a divorce you never wanted and cannot seem to halt, all you can think about is the devastation of losing your marriage. Your partner. Your best friend. The pain is unimaginable and a future without your spouse feels impossible.
I know. I’ve been there.
And I’ve also made it through.
Now, over five years out, I can say that my tsunami divorce was the worst thing to ever happen to me.
And also the best.
Sometimes you have to lose what you wanted.
To get what you need.
And sometimes you have to decide you want to feel better.
More than you want to hold onto the past.
Let Go of the Marriage You Thought You Had
You didn’t have a good marriage.
Maybe you thought you did. Maybe you still do.
But the truth is that it wasn’t the marriage you thought you had. Because if it was good, it would not be ending.
I had the hardest time accepting that truth. From my perspective, my marriage was great. And sometimes, when I think back at the wonderful moments we shared, I still do. I was happy. I had a good marriage.
But he didn’t. And it wasn’t.
In some ways, that realization was freeing. The divorce wasn’t the end of something good. It was the end of something broken. Even if I didn’t see the cracks.
You didn’t have the marriage you thought you had. It’s time to let it go.
I know his name. His face. His birthday. His social security number. His family. Yet I still do not know who he is. However, I can tell you who he was. He was my best friend. My lover. My confidant. He was the man who built a toy chest for our friend’s son’s birthday. He was the man whose scent instantly calmed me and whose arms held me like they were molded from my frame. He was a voracious reader and he devoured science fiction and fantasy novels. His favorite series was The Dark Tower, by Stephen King. He hated tomatoes and loved Sweetwater IPA. He preferred dark clothes and refused to wear V-necks. He wore his watch on his right wrist, the face to the inside of his arm. He was the man who patiently built me an office and then rebuilt it for me when I grew weary of the desk where I spent hours writing papers. He was a quick learner, but a poor student in school. He was a fan of Apple, Banana Republic, and Alice in Chains. He was never athletic due to bad knees, although he started to work out once the pounds encroached with age. He was the man who stayed up all night for a week with our third puppy who came to us with kennel cough. He was so confident that I would win Teacher of the Year, that he ordered flowers before the votes were announced. He was the man I turned to for advice and comfort. He was my everything.
He was all of these things, yet he was also the man who left his wife of ten years with a text message. He was the man who hid debts and stole money from accounts. He was the man who wooed an innocent woman, told her nothing but lies, and married her although he was already wed. He was the man that locked the dogs in the basement and drove off, not knowing that they would survive. From Who Is He?
It’s Okay to Grieve. And It’s Okay to Move On.
An unwanted divorce is an enormous loss. You are losing the image you had of your spouse and your marriage. You are losing your present life. And you are even losing your hopes and dreams for the future. It touches every area of your life.
It’s okay to mourn the loss of what was and what would be.
I spent hours keening in my room, my pillow muffling my cries so that couldn’t be heard. I ran hundreds of miles with tears streaming down my cheeks, blurring the path in front of me. I would pick up the phone, just wanting to hear his voice, before I would remember that it wasn’t mine to hear anymore.
And I also made strides to begin my new life. I wrote and posted goals for the year. I made new friends and tried new things. I dreamed about what I wanted for my next chapter and started taking baby steps towards those aspirations.
By all means, grieve.
And also live.
I would have moments, even days, where the suffering was unseen. But its absence was always short-lived and my brain had a trigger-finger that would herald its return at the slightest provocation. My body held the memories like the discs in a juke-box, ready to play with the touch of a button. As long as I didn’t approach, I was okay. But as soon as I recounted the tale, my voice would tremble and the pain would come rushing back as though it had been lying in wait.
And so I kept telling the story. And with each retelling, the heartache faded a little more. And the suffering grew weaker. My once constant companion became like a distant friend – we may keep in touch on Facebook, but we have no real need for face to face. From The Evolution of Suffering
Don’t Sign Away Your Right to Happiness
It’s funny. In a divorce, people will fight over the house. The retirement. The cars. But they often forget to fight for what really matters.
Your own well-being.
Be too stubborn to allow your ex to control your happiness. They may have ended the marriage, but they didn’t end you.
My early inroads to happiness were initiated out of spite. I went to a party at the lake soon after the text, mentally saying, “I’ll show him that I can still laugh.” I accepted a date, thinking “I’ll show him that I’m still desirable.” I went hiking on “our” favorite trail, muttering “You can’t take this from me” with every step.
In time, my spite faded, but my tenacity did not.
I was more determined than ever to live a good life. To show that I am stronger than what happened to me.
If you can’t because of, smile in spite of.
I began to realize that by telling him that he made me happy, I was putting all of the responsibility for my own well-being on his shoulders. That is a huge burden to carry and one that was unfair to him. I had given him the power to make me happy. Which means he also had the power to make me unhappy.
If I had left that power in his hands, he would have packed up my happiness with the rest of his belongings when he walked out the door. I snatched it back from him, determined to find a way to regain ownership of my well-being. From You Make Me Happy
Just Because You Can’t Picture It, Doesn’t Mean You Can’t Create It
It’s difficult to imagine things that we have not experienced. It is one of the reasons that we fear loss more than we value gain. And when you’re trying to picture a life without your spouse after an unwanted divorce? The brain simply seizes, locking in on what is missing.
Your brain is only telling you part of the story. Yes, there is loss. And there is also possibility.
In the beginning, all I could think about was that I wanted what I had had. Then I realized I could create something even better.
It’s hard in the beginning to think about your future, unbound by the marriage you thought you would have forever. We tend to limit our thoughts and, in turn, ourselves.
The ending may have been unwanted. Now create a life you want.
Bloom where you’re planted.
Everything’s going to be okay.
That was my mantra for that first, awful post-divorce year.
Everything’s going to be okay.
I would repeat those words in my head as I lay sleepless every night.
Everything’s going to be okay.
My friends and family would offer those words as comfort, reminding me that the “now” was not the always.
Everything’s going to be okay.
I imagined some future where he would face consequences and I would be relieved of mine.
Everything’s going to be okay.
Sometimes, I railed against that platitude, uncertain how anything could ever be okay again.
Everything’s going to be okay.
But still, I held onto those words like a life raft, wanting to be pulled free from the pain.
Everything’s going to be okay.
Those words were my Xanax against the panic, the overwhelming fear of unwanted change.
Everything’s going to be okay.
One day I realized that it really was okay. Maybe it wasn’t the okay I imagined, but it was okay nonetheless. From Everything’s Going to Be Okay
Different Can Be Good. Or Even Better.
Yes, it is hard adapting to life after an unwelcome divorce. You are forced to change when you were happy with the status quo. It’s not fair. Life rarely is.
You can’t go back. But you can always move on.
And one day you just might find that you’re happy that your life didn’t go as planned.
I know I am.
So now here I am. Open and bleeding. No walls, no buried head. I need to learn to be here, to stay vulnerable, without allowing myself to panic and either hide or grasp too tightly. It’s not easy. It doesn’t feel safe.
I want reassurances. Promises. But the truth? That’s only a bandaid. I need to relax and breathe through my fear. I know I’ll be okay, I just need to do a better job of convincing myself. After all, the only true abandonment is when we abandon our true selves. And that’s one I can control. From Vulnerable
Here’s my personal message to those in acute divorce pain. In it, I give some strategies for moving on when all you want is for everything to be the way it was.
And that little prepositional phrase, “at school” is so much more important than its brevity and simplicity suggests.
You see, six years ago, that sentence would not have ended with that phrase even though school was the source of the stress. Because survival mode in one area of my life unerringly expanded to be survival mode in all areas of my life. Stress at work blossomed and grew, filling every crevice of my life. In times of intensity at school, I brought both literal and figurative work home with me every night and double on the weekends.
There were no boundaries.
I learned something about survival mode during the year of tear-stained cheeks. I was unwittingly enrolled in a survival boot camp that year, as I was literally fighting to regain some sort of life again in the midst of madness.I discovered that even though I could not entirely avoid situations that called for survival mode, I could limit their influence.
I could set boundaries.
Survival mode happens to us all. It is characterized by periods of overwhelming intensity that require that your world shrink to accommodate the demands of the stressor. Survival mode can be triggered by something as happy as the birth of a baby and the lack of sleep collides with immense responsibility and never-ending need. It can come on the heels of a loss, a death or divorce wiping out any sense of normalcy and the trauma short-circuiting any coping mechanisms.
Or, as with my current state of survival, it can come as a perfect storm of factors. In this case, two weeks of being drained by the flu combined with crazy deadlines at work and a lack of planning time coinciding with my husband being out-of-town and a stretch where Atlanta was impersonating a Seattle winter, collided to create a maelstrom of stress.
So at work right now I’m in complete survival mode. My blinders are on, my head is down. I’m just focused on trying to get it done without neglecting to breathe in the meantime. But apart from one cryfest on the way home from work on Tuesday (of which there is thankfully no footage) and some sleep interrupted by anxiety-fueled dreams, the survivor mode has been confined within the walls of the school.
The boundaries are holding.
Here is some of what I learned in survivor school. Maybe it can help you next time you find yourself in survival mode.
A Space For Everything
Compartmentalize. And then compartmentalize some more. Just because things are falling apart in one area of your life, doesn’t mean it’s all bad. It’s easy to believe that if we blur the lines and give whatever the stressor is more energy, more time that we will be able to chip away at it. But the truth is that most of the time, allowing to spread only poisons other areas and doesn’t really help the original issue. When you’re in it, be in it. But also allow yourself moments away. Give yourself the gift of respite.
Institute a Catastrophizing Ban
It may suck, but it’s rarely as bad as we make it seem when we’re overwhelmed and under-rested. Take a step back. Breathe. Identify and take one step at a time. And make sure to celebrate any progress you make. Remember that it may be the world’s biggest molehill, but it’s still not a mountain.
To Thine Own Self Be Kind
Allow yourself a good cry. Pamper yourself with a moment alone or a special treat. Prioritize sleep; its lack makes everything harder. Don’t be too scared to ask for help or too proud to receive it. If you’re physically able, get up and move. Go outside. Peek at the stars. They have a way of putting everything in perspective.
Let the Little Things Go
When you’re in survival mode, your world has to temporarily shrink down to the necessities. It’s okay to neglect non-essentials so that you can focus on what is critical. And you define what is critical. For me this past week, critical has meant time to read in bed with Tiger curled up by side. And to make that happen, I ignored tasks around the house.
In survival mode, you’re not going for perfection, you’re working on making it until the next day. And as long as you do that, call it a success.
See the Light
Survival situations don’t persist forever; don’t let your survival mode become a way of living. Recognize when the pressures lift and expand your world again.
In an ideal world, everyone that causes harm to another, either intentionally or unintentionally, would immediately offer up a genuine apology: accepting responsibility, acknowledging the pain, express empathy and remorse, immediately changing behavior and, if appropriate, making amends for the damage caused. But we know that rarely happens. And it never happens as quickly as we would like.
Instead, we receive a “sorry” tossed out with little thought and nothing to back it up. We hear, “I’ll do better” and better never comes. We may find that in place of an apology, we instead receive blame and misplaced anger as defensiveness leads instead of empathy. The apology may be discounted by the excuses that accompany it. We may see an utter lack of comprehension at the pain that was inflicted. Or we may just be listening to radio silence, waiting for an apology that never comes.
An apology that maybe we don’t even need.
Why do we want apologies?
Children are taught almost as soon as they can talk to say “Please” when they want something, “Thank you” when they receive something and “I’m sorry” when they hurt someone. At the most surface level, we view an apology as a basic ritual of societal order that preserves a sense of fairness and responsibility.
Apologizing has become almost a knee-jerk reaction for many. How often have you bumped into somebody or inadvertently cut someone off with your grocery cart and had the word, “Sorry” out of your mouth without thinking? Even in such a minor interaction without much empathy or remorse behind the word, the apology still carries importance. When it is uttered, it acknowledges the infraction and its impact on the other person. When nothing is said, the other person feels invisible and insignificant.
Pain wants to be heard; the need for our suffering to be acknowledged drives our need for an apology. And the greater the perceived damage, the greater the perceived need for an apology. We all have an inherent sense of fairness, a balance of how things “should” be. When someone harms us, that balance is disrupted and we presume that an apology will make strides towards correcting that imbalance and restoring a sense of fairness.
We often see an acknowledgement of the slight and remorse for the actions as the keystone in the bridge to healing. As though once that apology is received, the remainder of the recovery follows. And so we wait.
Because we want to be heard. Understood. And the pain keeps screaming until it is recognized.
What are the limitations of apologies?
Apologies can never undo what was done. They are not a magical eraser than removes any harsh words or caustic actions. When we imbue them with these special powers, we increase our expectations to a level that can never be reached.
No apology will ever be good enough to abolish the pain and reverse the damage. Just as you cannot control somebody else’s apology, they cannot mitigate your suffering.
An apology or a lack thereof is a reflection of the other person’s character, not your worth.
When somebody causes harm and refuses to accept responsibility, they are telling you who they are, not who you are.
When someone is too cowardly to admit fault, they are showing you their shortcomings, not yours.
And just because somebody displays an utter lack of empathy, it does not mean your pain is not real and valid.
When you wait for an apology, you are allowing the person who harmed you to continue to harm you. You’re letting them decide if you get to be okay again.
And is that really a decision you want to place in the hands of someone who lacks empathy and courage?
If this person is still involved in your life and they are unable or unwilling to authentically apologize, take a good look at your boundaries. Is this someone that you want to remain in your life?
How can you accept the apology you never received?
The most critical component of accepting an apology you never received is to eliminate any magical thinking you have about apologies. They are no holy grail of healing. They do not have the power to erase what has happened. Once you realize that, it becomes easier to let go of the driving need for acknowledgement and amends. An apology is only required if you give it that power.
Your well-being should not hinge on somebody else’s shortcomings.
Their inability to accept responsibility is their problem.
Not yours.
Your healing is your responsibility.
Accept it.
If you’re having trouble accepting an apology you’ve never received, this can help.
My ex and I had a sense that it was the two of us against the world.
There were several factors that contributed to that mindset: We were teenagers when we started dating and teenagers think everyone is against them. We grew up on opposite sides of town and so from the beginning, our social circles never had too much overlap. We both experienced the death of several friends and mentors towards the end of high school and shortly after, leaving us to lean heavily upon the other. And then, perhaps sealing the deal, we moved halfway across the country to follow his job opportunities, leaving friends and family behind.
After settling in Atlanta, we found new friends. There were singles and couples that we would regularly socialize with. We found families that would “adopt” us for holidays.
But we never found community.
We never had an interconnected group of people to which we both belonged in equal measure.
And to be honest, I didn’t really notice at the time. As an introvert, I tend to prefer to socialize one-on-one or in smaller groups. I frequently would go to Friday “meetings” after work with the other teachers and my husband would often join for at least part of the time. His boss’ family took us in for celebrations and holidays and we blended in with their adult children and grandchildren. Or so I thought before painfully learning otherwise after the abandonment.
But even with this connection, we still ultimately only relied on each other. Opened up to each other.
It was still us vs. the world.
And then he left.
And I realized that I didn’t have to prepare for battle with the world.
I could let it in.
And now in my new marriage, it’s my husband and me in our world.
Lessons From the End of a Marriage 