I’ve just been reading Jen Louden’s account of being divorced over on her site and her Choose your Life Monday’s post.
Whenever I read about other people’s accounts of being divorced a great big, “Me too!” fills my heart and my eyes well with tears, as I recognise that I’m not alone in my experience, even if my experience differs.
Jen writes, “What I didn’t know before I got divorced is the divorce never ends” and she accounts for the sadness that sometimes swamps her over.
Until this moment I did not recognise this in myself.
I’ve recently been swamped by sadness over a relationship that ended and it has confused me utterly.
Whilst I’ve allowed that confusion to be there and work its way to the surface quite happily without moving to fix it and I’ve journalled madly about it and had some astounding, as ever, insights about the whys and wherefores of the sad, reading Jen’s post woke a bit of recognition in me.
Perhaps one day I’ll be able to stop pretending that really it was nothing big. (I am so good at this that my friends forget that I am divorced).
Perhaps one day I’ll be able to validate the very real pain of ending a marriage holds and let myself feel that without being afraid of being utterly overcome by it.
I may one day be able to cradle those lost dreams with tenderness and some distance, rather than just feeling the pain of “those are my dreams down the pan and I wonder if I’ll ever, ever get a second chance?”
Perhaps one day I’ll remember that it’s okay to feel this way even if there were no children involved and no big kerfuffle in the course of being divorced.
A smooth transaction does not necessarily mean a painless one.
I’m making such a life for myself as a singleton you would not believe, I will never doubt that I did the right thing, but still…
There is pain and until I’m ready to accept that pain for what it is, I’m going to let it be okay for smaller, more everyday things hold up the mirror to the process and let them take the blame.
Because that’s okay too.
I might go away and have a little cry too, just for now.
Filed under: Deep and meaningful stuff, In search of love | Tagged: Divorce | 3 Comments »
