DIVORCE | REBIRTH | FREEDOM

My Birth on the Bridge

My story of holding on and letting go

I find myself on that same damn bridge a couple of times a year now.

The salty tears no longer accompany me. Reflections on the water and those in my mind bring me peace. The locals in Palm City, Florida, call it the new bridge. I call it my bridge. My devotion to it never wavered.

I had just wanted to divorce and drink wine.

A vastly different plan, one I had not received a memo on, was in the works. The Master puppeteer who pulled at the strings laughed. I imagined the peal of a loud, maniacal cackle, at what I wanted. He directed me elsewhere.

Exhaustion was my middle name. I maintained my smile.

Day to day sucked my energy field dry. I slowly suffocated. I needed to breathe freely. I craved a revisit from the girl inside me of yesteryear who had big plans. The young woman who not only dreamed big but would unabashedly take on new endeavors was sorely missed.

That fearless girl.

Where was she? I didn’t want to simply revisit her. I wanted to invite her back to the surface and take the reins. I ached for her. She was laden with a lot of emotional baggage. I prayed that it wasn’t too late to unearth her from under the wreckage.

I had been married for exactly half of my life. This realization bubbled to the surface in my darkest moments. The hollow echo taunted me with thoughts that this was it. An emotional void was my destiny.

Or was it?

Hope was my driving force.

Marriage counseling was going well. If you asked him, at least.

He walked into our sessions crisp, with memorized pages of all the right things to say, and questioned my memory. Funny, my same keen memory that he would boast about to everyone else for 20 years became flawed and vacuous overnight.

My anguished pleas never made it past the counselor’s ears to his. I exposed my underbelly of raw emotions and begged for resolution. I could see his brain flipping through his mental pages until he found a reference to prove his case that I was imagining things. We sat there. Two pages from two different books. I embodied every book in the series “Chicken Soup for the Soul” by Jack Canfield. He was an instruction manual with pages of small print in a foreign language.

The writing was on the wall.

We had grown in opposite directions.

Possibly neither was right, neither was wrong, just woefully disparate to be healthy together.

The chasm widened.

We were nearing the end.

The counselor saw it coming.

I was grasping at the edge of the cliff, desperately clinging to the last chunk of grass. I knew once I fell, there would be no returning. I was afraid of the bottom. I am a believer, though. Even if the right hill is steep, covered in jagged rocks and broken glass, I will take it. Slow, steady, and full of hope, faith will steer me as I navigate new terrain.

“Let’s meet again next week, shall we?” Just like that, her notebook snapped closed.

We exchanged a quick kiss that made minimal contact. Lips barely brushed the surface of our cheeks. He hurriedly left and got back into the car. His car.

I dried my tears and bent down to pick up the baby carrier that our 6-month-old grandson was nestled in.

I drove to our temporary apartment. It was a lower-income housing complex. In theory, once I had successfully helped my daughter complete her case plan with the State, she could afford to stay there with her son and without me. I would go back to our family home and continue working on my marriage.

The theory was much different than the practice.

My daughter gave up trying.

My husband gave up trying.

I was an island.

A 53-year-old desolate island with an infant.

My daughter would come back and forth periodically. Most of the time, she stayed in a tent with the baby’s daddy. She would show up every few weeks. Neither was equipped to parent.

I wondered if I would die from loneliness.

I was lonely married, and I was lonely not.

I had to stay put for 180 days per Family Court. Just me and the baby, walking through clouds of toxic air of exhaled weed billowing over to our opening from the neighboring doorways.

My days were filled with surprise visits from the baby’s Guardian Ad Litem, a social worker, and my daughter’s caseworker. Those visits meant everything to me. I wasn’t even bothered by the occasional police activity. Without any of them, I had no one. I was stuck in an unfamiliar area. I had no other adult conversation, no marriage waiting.

I had no wine.

Our outings were mundane and routine. Every morning I pushed the stroller with the baby and all his gadgets for 5 miles. We followed that up with a bottle and a nap. Some days we went to a supermarket. On other days we went to Family Court.

I was lost.

As I kept my emotional self on an even keel for the baby, my body rebelled.

I maintained my smile and my hope.

I was bleeding out.

Mysterious blood loss, source unknown, was exiting from any available opening my body offered. Cameras, probing, and numerous tests resulted in the only reasonable conclusion. My psychological turmoil was manifesting physically. I was pale, tired, and 15 pounds lighter.

I will fix this, the havoc that I caused my body.

I stared at the brilliant skies with no horizon, no end. Right then and there, I vowed to trust in the plan. I would stop looking for answers and simply believe. I handed over my troubles and let go of the control I was clutching. It was never mine, to begin with, after all.

I began to breathe.

After 180 days, the Courts granted me Permanent Guardianship. The divorce proceedings were underway. I could not go back to the home I once enjoyed. I needed to break out of my temporary cage.

I quickly found a new nest, albeit still temporary, to camp out in while I looked for a home. The divorce was finalized, and a new home perfect for just the baby and me was in my familiar town.

The divorce, though my choice, was still a grieving process. Friends picked sides, our kids were angry, and some considered me dead.

I won’t die from loneliness.

I refused.

I dropped the baby off at daycare. I went for my daily morning run. I found balance and a sense of peace when I ran. It was better than most therapies.

And it was at the peak of my favorite bridge that I screeched to a halt.

Something was different.

Me.

I was different. My outer shell crashed to the ground. An inaudible thud was heard ‘round the world.

I was instantly lighter and felt hope wash over me and through me. All-consuming in its strength, it had stopped me in my tracks.

I was free.

Free to be me, again. That girl inside won. She bolted to the surface and took a big gulp of air while tears streamed down my cheeks.

She made her reentry with a rush.

I ran again with renewed vigor. My tears of inexplicable joy and peace washed the last remnants of the pain away.

I was back.

The baby and I would be fine. In fact, it was abundantly clear that we would be better than fine now.

The fearless girl has this.

She was me.

I was her, and I was back.

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Copyright © 2022 Lisa S. Gerard. All rights reserved.