Breaking Free: Why I’m Celebrating Divorce
Explore the uplifting side of celebrating divorce
February. The month to celebrate love.
I see Valentine’s Day cards, boxes of chocolates, and images of hearts everywhere I look.
I love, love.
Who doesn’t?
However, in February, I celebrate the joy of divorce.
Make no mistake, I am very happily married and have no immediate plans to divorce my husband.
However, my parents chose to marry on the 20th day of February.
They also chose to divorce.
For this, I am forever grateful.
My parents were unhappily married for 25 of the worst years known to mankind.
They never should have gotten married (something my mother decided to inform me of on my wedding day!)
I asked my mother why she went through with the “I do." She explained that she was 19 years old and that times were different.
Back then, women, in particular, lived at home with their parents until they typically got married and moved out.
My mother loved her family very much but also shared a room with my aunt, her younger sister, by six years. So when my mother was 19, she had to share a space with a thirteen-year-old!
As a mother of thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds, I can empathise with my mom for coming up with any reason to move out and escape!
As for my father, he is a prick, and I suspect he just asked her to marry him to weasel his way into her pants.
So they got married when she was 19 and he was 21.
He was the son of a very wealthy and cunning family. They loved my mother for finally ridding them of the responsibility of cleaning up their sons’ constant fuckups. They showed their appreciation by purchasing them a house and continuing to fund my father’s every diabolical business whim.
My father was known as a “bad boy," or if it was current times, a “fuck boi.”
He repelled responsibility and made it his lifetime practice to avoid it or make it everyone else’s problem when it was forced upon him.
And it was well and truly forced upon him when I came along a year later!
My mom was 21 and had the delight (that was me) to raise; all the while, her sperm-donating husband was too busy avoiding responsibility to provide her with any care or attention.
She was lonely and resentful.
He also travelled a lot.
He used to say it was for work, but the mere fact that I now have a Thai stepmother whose age is dangerously close to mine would indicate he spent his time travelling out of the office.
Four years later, they somehow managed to make my sister.
If the responsibility of having one kid was demanding, imagine two at a time before iPads.
To cut a very long, tumultuous story a little shorter, I shan’t bore you with the long list of misogynistic examples that explain the nature of my parent’s marriage.
What I will tell you is that around the time my grandparents passed away when I was 14 years old, my selfish dick of a dad decided to remove himself from whatever brain-balancing pills he used to take, as naturally, he is more educated than anyone who works in the psychiatric field.
He spent the next eight years tormenting our entire family before he got up and left to flee overseas, leaving my mother with all his debt and bankruptcy.
He succeeded in avoiding financial responsibilities on top of parental and spousal responsibilities.
How shocking that they divorced!
Due to the fucktard that is my father having gone incognito in a foreign country, unable to be precisely located, my mother had to go through the process of getting divorced without him in the picture.
I don’t know how that is done, but she went to divorce court.
She must have just flashed an image of her train wreck, the con man of a missing husband, and the wonderful magistrate granted her the most celebrated divorce certificate in the history of marriage breakdowns.
My mom called me at work to tell me it was all done.
I made noises like I was cheering at a rock concert.
There were “whooooo-hoooos” and “yipppeees”, followed by several “fuck yeaaahhs!”
The other ladies in the quiet office stood up in their cubicles, wondering if I had won the lotto.
“Nope, even better! My mom just got her divorce from my dickhead of a father!”
Naturally, laughter and celebrations ensued.
While the end of a marriage might not seem like the typical cause for celebration, more and more people are choosing to mark this significant life change with positivity, closure, and a dash of festivity.
And so they should.
If you have ever been stuck in a bad situation that you can’t get out of, it’s worth the excitement when you finally do.
A note on sensitivity
Many people on the opposite side of divorce may not want to celebrate.
And I get it.
If your divorce was the result of infidelity, or perhaps you got no say in the decision, it would be heartbreaking.
Celebrating divorce isn’t about diminishing the challenges or the pain that comes with it.
So, I’m not suggesting that you should pop the bubbles and throw the streamers if that’s different from where your mind is at.
It’s about acknowledging the strength to move forward and choosing to do so with hope and positivity.
However, if you were in a situation like my mom’s, a party is most certainly in order!
Why celebrate divorce?
It’s a way to say, “I’ve grown, I’ve learned, and I’m ready to embrace what’s next.”
It’s about finding closure and healing in a personal and empowering way.
If you were in a situation where you were silenced, controlled, or threatened, it would be a way to scream from the hilltops that you had finally gained your freedom!
And for some lonely souls who may have been in sexless marriages, it might be a way of saying, “I’m horny, and I’m ready!”
The divorce party: A trend on the rise
The divorce party is a trend that’s been gaining momentum worldwide.
From intimate gatherings with close friends to lavish affairs, the idea is to surround yourself with love and support as you mark the end of one chapter and the beginning of another.
Think of it as a symbolic gesture of freeing yourself from the past and looking forward to the future.
Celebrate new beginnings, adventures, and the beautiful journey of rediscovering yourself. Celebrate moving forward, not just moving on.
Remember, even if you don’t feel like celebrating just yet, as Fat Boy Slim famously said, you’ve come a long way, baby!
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