Month: August 2017
My husband pulled his car out of the driveway and took off for work, and I picked up a truck, loaded it and was moved out before he got home that same day. By about 8 p.m. I was living in a one-room loft with my dog and was no longer living under the same roof with the man I had married nearly 30 years prior. My stomach was in knots. A few friends and my children knew that I was leaving that day and some came down to help me get things set up a little. I was scared to death, but I knew it was the only thing left to do in a bad marriage that I had lived with for three decades. Now, it is two years later.
Other than my children, I could think of nothing good about that marriage. Sad but true. And now my hair had fallen out, I was a wreck and I looked like I was 100 years old because the only way I could sleep was to have too many cocktails. My life was a nightmare in 2015. I lived in hell and it was time: I was starting over.
I love my life now, but that didn’t happen overnight and being single after sixty is no day at the beach. Every day I cried for about a year and a half, not because I missed my husband, but because I missed a marriage that never was: a happy, healthy partnership. My fierce dedication to keeping my children’s family in one piece was, at best, misguided: the family was in one piece but was nothing like what a well-functioning family should be. I liken it to a piece of paper that has been torn up and taped back together. It is not exactly whole.
Do not think for a minute that I am saying that this hasn’t been the hardest thing I have ever done. It has. My friends are married couples mostly and they have been so good to me and have kept me busy, but that is not the same as going home with your partner and having someone to talk with at the end of the day. Much of my weekend I spend alone. It’s OK, but I have weekends when I have no plans until Monday. When I was married I called that the best weekend ever, now it can be a little isolating.
Life is Different Two Years Later
My adult children had one family before, now they have two and one of them does not include me. My husband would not move from our marital home so I had to move to a small apartment. It crushed me to think of leaving my home in order to leave my husband, but it has been the best thing that has ever happened to me, so thank you, husband. I could have been sitting in a big old house on a big old country club golf course (not a golfer) watching big old men playing golf, and maintaining my big new pool (OK, the pool is the one thing I miss at that house). We had people who maintained the yard, the trees, the snow removal, the pool, the irrigation system, the plumbing, the fireplaces. You get the picture. And that would have been on me. Now, my idea of home maintenance is running the dishwasher!
Moving Forward
Fast forward to 2017 and what my life looks like today. I am at ease and confident and happy. I smile all the time. Personally, I know that I look better than I have for at least 15 years. I have a little more hair now and I am not shaking all the time, so that’s a plus. I had added the weight of the marriage to my body: I ate my way through my married life. Guess I need to work on that now that all else has fallen into place. Everything I own is in one room. I had to leave a lot behind: lots of family photos and furniture and lots of memories. So now I just have to make new memories. Happy memories. Memories that don’t include my husband. New memories for me and my children.
So, Cheers to Me! I am so excited to see what the future holds for me.
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Ask yourself these questions:
Do you trust yourself? Do you trust your instincts? Do you listen to what your mind and your heart are telling you or, do you argue with that little voice in your head? Or even tell that voice to shut-up?
When I was a young woman I had good instincts and made good decisions. I think I knew myself well. But, that changed.
For the past three decades or more I stopped listening to myself. I stopped listening because I knew that little voice was right about my marriage, my husband, my career moves, about everything. Throughout my married life, I had to shut down my instincts because listening to them meant breaking up my children’s family (I guess that came from the motherly instinct to hold the family together). I can sit here and name a hundred times when I had to convince myself about one story while I knew the truth was another. Consequently, so many of my decisions were poor at best and disastrous on the bottom end. My personality was different. Some of the people I spent time with would not be a match today. I had no self-confidence, although no one who knew me would have believed that. And, I didn’t like myself for many of the last thirty years, not because I thought I was bad, just not me. In short, I was not myself because I wasn’t listening to my heart and my mind and following that path.
I need to put a disclaimer here for my children: every second that I spent with them and on them was my only real joy. That was real, that was authentic, that was the place where I listened to my instincts. They were and are my North Star.
Today, I am the happiest that I think I have been in a long time. Of course, I am disappointed that I am soon to be divorced, but I can only use that as a springboard for the new life I want to lead. Since the day I knew that my marriage was finally over, I have been listening to the voice in my head and the decisions I have made have all been the right ones. Everything just fell into place once I got myself back. My hair even started growing back (yes, I had lost a lot of hair and I didn’t start with much). I now listen to my heart and my head and they haven’t steered me wrong yet.
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