Divorcing Myself
I was 38, nearly 39. 40 felt way too close. But why? I’d never had an issue with aging before. I drew in a breath to my already tightening chest, or I tried to. What was this? Not anxiety or depression; no, we’re old friends and I know what their knock sounds like (who am I kidding? They never knock!). No, this was something else. My chest tightened further. I was gasping for air as if the oxygen around me was being siphoned away. And then I felt it… a drop on my leg, then one on my hand. Why is everything blurry? My chin quivers in that way that it does, and I know I can’t stop it at this point. It’s coming. My ribcage expands slightly, and one desperate breath slips in. And then it all comes out. The tears. The sadness. The hate. The tears. The anger. The loneliness. The tears. The frustration. The fatigue. The tears. The tears. The tears.
In my mind, the seven years leading up to that day were the progressive decline of my marriage. There was no one incident, one fight, one deal-breaker to be found. It was just slowly eroding away beneath us. On the outside, while not necessarily the picture of matrimonial bliss, we still had most of our world convinced.
Seeing as I was in my late thirties, and most of my friends were a bit older than me, I had little trouble finding some who had been through a recent divorce. As luck would have it, two particularly close friends fit the bill and baring my soul to them required far less alcohol than navigating this road on my own. I talked to them about every aspect of divorce that I could think of, and they were goldmines of information. Everything from how to talk to the kids, to which lawyers would charge me for every paperclip used to the horrors of online dating — which was only in its fetal stages when my ex and I first got together. They really were a wonderful support system, especially since, at this point, my family was quite certain I had triple flipped off the high board.
The more I talked with my friends, the more I realized something incredibly important to my own understanding of the situation. Yes, I was unhappy in my marriage, but it became slap-me-in-the-face, beat-me-over-the-head obvious that I was unhappy with who I was, who I had become over the years. I had developed a learned helplessness, and I had welcomed negativity into too many other areas of my life, and the misery became self-defining. I was a miserable person. I saw the misery in everything around me. I look back now and wonder how people could stand to be near me… I didn’t even want to be near me.
In addition to having to go through a divorce in the traditional sense, it was time to divorce myself. It was time to let go of all the things that I had become, at least the things that weren’t going to serve me well, going forward. But, when nothing is as it should be, it’s hard to know where to start. The bedroom floor existed, in theory, but I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes in years, loads of laundry neglected in the washing machine — revolting back by smelling like neglect. And why cook when all you need is a microwave to make a meal happen? My god, I was worse than an unprepared freshman on my own for the first time.
My husband and I got a two-bedroom basement apartment, and we took turns staying there while the other one stayed in the home with the kids. We wanted to disrupt their lives as little as possible, and we were willing to go a little bit broke doing it. But this apartment was exactly what I needed at that time. It was my blank slate. My fresh start. And I could see the floor! Huge bonus!
It was not a place I was about to start decorating or making feel like home, because it wasn’t that, it was simply a holding zone for the off-duty parent, and we had no long-term plans there. But that whole time that I lived there, I did what I had set out to do. I kept it clean, stayed on top of laundry, and only ate ice cream for dinner a few times. I was proud of myself, but let’s be honest, these are the babiest of baby steps, I was literally only taking care of myself.
When I walked into my lawyer’s office for the first time, I searched for my mom’s hand to hold. While it would always be there metaphorically, I had to remind myself that if I was old enough to be getting a divorce, I was most definitely old enough to walk through a set of doors on my own. But I still felt like a bit of a fraud. When my lawyer walked in and was a solid ten years younger than me, I felt better. I could do this.
Next came selling the family home and getting our own places. My agent was a very dear friend who provided a perfect balance of hand holding and gentle nudging out of the nest, onto the limb, and off into the world. She really was my mama bird through the house-hunting process, fortunately regurgitating only experience and knowledge into my outstretched beak. But this is where the real divorce happened.
All the inching along got me ready for this massive jump. I had my own place, and I was determined that the floors would always be visible. It’s easy, when you start with an empty canvas, to paint the picture you see in your mind. Sure I slipped occasionally, and yes, there was one room in the house that held never-unpacked boxes for the whole two years I lived there….I just kept that door closed. It wasn’t denial; it was permission to remain humanly flawed while growing.
In the 20 years with my ex, I wasn’t really involved in executing anything financially related. I had handled my (very few) monthly expenses while in university, but remembering to pay the phone or cable bill doesn’t aptly train you for the real world of financial management. I knew nothing of insurance… car, home, health, life, insuring the kids, etc., and now it was on me to figure it all out.
This process was overwhelming, as the cost of life is rather eye-opening when it’s all coming out of your account. For reference, this was legitimately my first time on my own as an adult. I went from my parent’s house to apartment sharing throughout my near-decade-long university career, to living with my husband following our 2003 wedding. I had been carried the whole time, gently passed from one person to the next. And now I had flung myself from the comfort and safety of their cradle, face down onto the ground. What I learned was that I am definitely way more valuable on paper. Or dead.
Next came the bills… just the regular old bills. Were there always this many of them? The flow of monthly expenses that filtered through my physical and virtual mailboxes seemed endless. And of course, they all come due at different times each month. I felt like crumbling, and not over the money — over how ridiculous I felt that I found this element of adulting overwhelming. I had been successful at making it look like I was a fully competent adult all these years, now I had to actually be one. Deep breaths. I pulled up my big girl pants and got my bills paid. Quietly patting myself on the back for another step taken.
Then one morning, my car didn’t start. My shitty, old, used, never-wanted-it-in-the-first-place, miss-my-old-SUVs, squeaky brakes, manual roll-down window, grandpa-gold sedan didn’t start. I really hated this car. And I’m clearly doing an awesome job of masking that fact! To me, it was the last remaining token of my old life, and it was holding me back. It was broken, and lame, and could not be revived — I mean, maybe it could, but I didn’t want to — scarily accurate mirroring here.
I walked, alone, into a dealership, but I felt like a child and searched for a hand to hold. All of my growth in the last year still hadn’t given me the confidence I needed. Without too much difficulty, I found the car that checked all the boxes and was in the right price range, but I was used to second-guessing myself. I asked my boyfriend, of almost a year at that time, to go look at it for me. I thought I needed someone to tell me it was the right place, the right car, the right price, but what I really needed was for someone to tell me that it was ok to make this huge decision on my own. And then I did. And then I drove off the lot with a new car and a newfound sense of self. This was my defining moment… I had shed the elements of my life that no longer fit my narrative and was emerging the person I was aching to be.
I still catch myself wondering how I came to be a 42-year-old woman, divorced, with two flourishing kids, my own home, and making life happen for myself. Real food was being cooked, trying out recommended recipes, and even experimenting on my own — you seriously can’t underestimate how good that felt for me. Laundry was washed, dried, and put away all on the same day (most of the time… I’m still human and my shows won’t binge themselves!). My car is reliable. My bills are paid. I can see the fucking floor!!
I have since moved in with my boyfriend and feel like an equal. I am not this helpless child that is willfully reliant on others to do the adulting for her. I have traded learned dependence for responsibility and confidence, and know that if I could do all that I did before turning 40, I can take whatever else comes my way. I have an incredible family and group of friends, neither of which would have ever let me flounder in my attempt to forge my own path, and I absolutely dipped into these emotional and knowledgeable resource pools as needed. And, with their help, I came out the other side, divorced from all the things about myself that needed to go.
It was never about a fear of aging. It was a fear of growing up. Somewhere in all of this, I turned 40. And it was fucking fabulous.