On this the day of my divorce

Today it's official. October 25th. 3 days after my 41st birthday and 9 months and 16 days before what would have been our 20th anniversary we are divorced. It was a whisper not a bang, Just an email with some bookkeeping details that let him know the judge had signed off. No court dates, no attorney battles. Just a slow quiet ending to a lifetime.

"The bonds of matrimony are dissolved."

Dissolved. Something once so solid, melted away. Drip by drip. Everyone wants to ask what happened. What was the cataclysmic event that blew everything apart? But there isn't a simple answer. There wasn't a fire or a hurricane or a big bad wolf that blew the house down. I don't usually attempt to answer. I can't fully explain to anyone who didn't live through it exactly why we chose to end our marriage. Some days I struggle to fully process it myself. I still question my own reality, my memories, my experiences. Did it really happen the way I remember it? Which parts of my memories should shape the narrative and create the "WHY?" Because in life, the pieces don't always fit together to make a neat story. The beginning middle and end don't make sense, they don't flow with a purpose, a meaning, the moral of the story. There's no lesson here for others. No formula to avoid or adopt. It just is.

If I had to give an analogy I would compare it to the slow decay of a house. Was it a bad blueprint? A crack in the foundation that could have been repairable if caught sooner? Was the wiring faulty from the beginning, always popping up with unexplained fires in unexpected places? Damage from a storm that was never repaired? Perhaps when things really went wrong, the contractors you called simply painted over the problem. Maybe the home improvement books you read were actually demolition manuals. But who can say? One day you realize the house isn't safe anymore and it doesn't really matter which series of events were responsible. And you can stand in the wreckage asking "How did we let it get like this?" but that doesn't fix a single broken window. The decision to move on instead of repair and rebuild is agonizing. But sometimes you realize that you just can't survive in an unhealthy place long enough to get it healthy again. Sometimes living in that unhealthy place makes it impossible to do the repairs. You need some shelter and rest. You need a break from the storms and the fires and the drip drip dripping of rain through the gaping hole in the roof.

This non-explanation is very unsatisfying for those on the outside. Especially those who might be clinging to their own marriage, desperately looking for a way to "fireproof" their own house, Likewise for those who feel the need to weigh the decisions of others to determine whether or not they are the right ones. To decide who's side to be on or whether the divorce was righteous or justified. They need a villain to blame or a clear moral lesson to ensure that as long as they do everything "right" this catastrophe can never happen to them. This applies to any tragedy, but especially to divorce. It's tempting to present a palatable narrative to those people. As humans we desire acceptance and validation. However offering up the most painful and intimate details of your life in exchange for public absolution from the social failure of divorce might succeed in making others more comfortable but rarely helps with actual healing. I don't mean to say people can’t or should't talk about their painful experiences, only that they shouldn't feel compelled to justify themselves in order to receive empathy and support.

So on this day of my divorce I am making an announcement, not a justification. There are no why's to give, no warnings, no blame or if only's. I won't presume to tell you how to feel but I will tell you how I feel today. Grief. Deep, heartrending aching grief. Tears have been shed. Today, last week, last month, last year and so many many years before, rivers of tears, oceans of tears. But also hope. Hope because I am healthier and more whole than I ever have been. Hope because I trust myself, I own my choices, I recognize my autonomy. Hope because I'm healing, Because giving up on a marriage doesn't mean giving up on the other person. It certainly doesn't mean giving up on a family. It still means rebuilding, just in a different way than I imagined.

If you are my friend reading this, or the friend of anyone going through divorce can I ask one thing of you? Don't just grieve with us. Often most of the grieving was in the past. We grieved in private and smiled with you in public. If you feel you need to process your feelings about our divorce perhaps do that in private as well. So that you can come to us in hope. Hope in our resiliency and strength. Belief in our abilities to make the best possible decisions in difficult circumstances and enough trust in us not to need to know all the details in order to determine whether or not you support our decisions. As our paths diverge from our former spouse, our former life, our former dreams, we don't need your approval, advice or admonishment. We don't want to be the example, the lesson, the neat morality tale. We just want you to walk with us, hold our hand and be present, if you can.