Week 4 - A little crying. A lot of anger. Onset of loneliness.
Rinse. Repeat. That's pretty how much it went down for me. It wasn't fun at all. And it lasted for 6 months.
Part of surviving the loneliness associated with divorce is plain old endurance — realizing that this is a stage which will help. Even in the midst of it all, you need to remember that there will come a day when this overwhelming grief, anger, loneliness, and all the rest will go away.
If you are getting divorced, you may want to plan a party to celebrate. After all, your girlfriends absolutely deserve to have some fun after the enormous amount of time and advice they’ve no doubt invested on your behalf. And besides, you too deserve to have a little fun, when all is said and done. The details of your party — such as whom to invite, where and when to have it, and what to serve — will largely depend on the type of divorce you’re planning.
For instance, if yours is going to be a quickie divorce, taking place in a sunny, foreign locale, there will be logistics to consider i.e.: travel, hotel and ground transportation, and of course knowing the proper legal protocol to follow and the location of a courthouse. If you’re going to stay a few days and work on your tan, you’ll need to pack a bag, making sure to remember the sunscreen, a trashy romance novel and the necessary paperwork.
Ex Number Two had been causing me some definite grief. But like the sun rises in the east, he makes a sudden mental shift and it's all coming up roses again.
I knew it would; he cycles through his pattern faster than my washing machine cycles through a heavy load.
His lows remind me every time why I left him. I feel nothing. The abusive behavior comes back, the mind f**k returns and I feel like I've been tossed five years back into a quagmire of mental hell - and I don't even live with him.
But when that cycle spins around, ooooh...
I had been having a bad time during the March break. Both kids had been at home for the week. The teen slept until 2 p.m. every day and didn't want to participate in activities. The toddler screamed and bounced off walls begging for an energy release.
I watched my workload pile up with no chance to dig in and earn some money. Fine, I thought. This is my chance for some forced vacation. We'll go to a museum. In the city. Two hours away. In winter.
Here they come. The Holidays. They start innocently enough with Halloween, mere child’s play, and then like an unstoppable string of cars rear-ending each other, it’s all downhill from there. Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years Eve, New Years Day and Valentine’s Day; I’ll be spending each one of them as a single woman for the first time in 12 years and it’s a frightening prospect, even though nothing could be as frightening as the final holiday season of my marriage.
You can divide the possessions, acquired over a lifetime together, share custody of the dogs (or children if you have them) and decide who will keep the house. But in the end, who gets custody of the friends when you get divorced? Unlike the coffee table and your wedding china, your friends have this thing called free will and it’s no picnic deciding who will get to keep them. Really, it’s their decision; you can’t very well saw them in half or bargain for them; unfortunately it just doesn’t work like that.
My ex-husband received notice that his parents were celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary this summer. "That's a reason to celebrate!" the invitation cheered.
Actually, I remember their 50th wedding anniversary. My ex's parents were remarried in church and there was a huge party afterwards. Good times, sure.
At one point, the priest was making a touching speech. My ex-husband's mother began to choke up with tears in her eyes, and she leaned a little bit closer to her husband very lovingly while dabbing at her face with a Kleenex.
He'd slapped her hand away. Right there in a church full of people, this man who'd just promised to love and honor slapped his wife's hand and shushed her. It was quiet, it was subtle, but he'd scolded her in public for showing affection.
A girlfriend and I were reminiscing the other day about our wild single days in Minneapolis right after my divorce.
We agreed that there are some things that a newly single girl can't live without. We came up with this list — feel free to add your thoughts in the comments!
Friends! Good, solid friends who will listen, cry, laugh, eat chocolate and shop with you.
Storage unit. If you don't want to throw every bit of your past away, get it out of the house. Deal with it when you're ready.
