I Lost My Purpose

Divorce strips life down to the bare bones.

This week would have been my 19th wedding anniversary.

Last year I was separated but still married and living together.

This is my first time not having a wedding anniversary in almost two decades. It’s messing with my head. I don’t feel like I have the right to feel conflicted because I’m the one who asked for the divorce. I’m the one who took away our anniversaries.

I don’t miss Joseph. But I miss everything surrounding marriage: the sense of family, my wedding ring, the annual tradition, and the freedom that comes from an extra income.

Divorce after two decades feels like you’ve played a video game and reached one of the top levels. You’ve accumulated the fancy armor, upgraded to the better weapons, scored the best skin, and unlocked achievements from conquering lands. Then it’s all taken away and you’re left with the basic player from the start of the game. No lands conquered, no armor, nothing in the backpack, wearing the basic tank top and shorts provided.

Except everyone else is still playing the game at level 984.

I don’t feel like I’m starting a new game with all new challenges and potential. I should, but I don’t. I feel like I’m staring at a screen with my stupid vanilla character, thinking “I don’t want to start all over again.”

My old life sucked. I’m not waxing nostalgic like it was a wonderful life. I planned to raise my kids and then die. That’s it.

But I had a plan. It was a depressing plan, but still…a plan.

Now I’m existing while lost. I know that I should have a newfound energy for life and embrace with a pounding heart all the possibilities. Maybe I would feel that way if I liked my life.

I’m very #blessed for affording a house during an insane housing market. And I was able to renovate it. My job, knock on wood, is relatively secure (for now) and extremely easy. So easy that I’m bored out of my mind and barely put in any hours. My life isn’t a struggle compared to many women post-divorce.

Adjusting is a struggle. Maybe it’s an autism thing because I’m a creature of habit who hates change. I’m rebuilding my emergency fund, which means I’m conserving money as best I can. Whoever says money can’t buy happiness has never experienced the freedom of having an income with a buffer for mini luxuries.

We never took family vacations or splurged on nice cars. But taking the kids to Legoland or hitting up Cheesecake Factory didn’t make a dent in our finances. I don’t believe in buying my kids material things but I believe in experiences. And experiences cost money.

It’s a shitty feeling when you don’t take your kids to McDonald’s because you need to save money.

Yesterday, I sat down with a calendar and colored pens. I scoured the internet for summer activities because I can’t afford to put my kids in day camps. I found all the free movies in the park across the city and free concerts, most of which even I don’t want to attend. There are a few events that got me excited to buy tickets, until the realization that after taxes and service charges are added make it a pipe dream to attend.

My kids desperately want to visit a water park we used to attend pre-Covid. Even a one-day stay will run me $350 without the cost of food. I wanted to visit Catalina Island but the cost of a weekend is enough to make me choke in horror.

Before anyone tries to pull the “visit a park” or “go on hikes”, spare me. I can’t go hiking every single day this summer, nor do I want to when it will be over 90 degrees. Parks require activities; my kids don’t want to sit on the grass and look at ants. I assure you, I’m the queen of frugality but I’ve exhausted my list of budget-friendly options. The stockpile of crafting options has dwindled to a single paint-your-own-window-dragon kit.

While I don’t believe this makes me a bad mother, it takes away from quality time with my kids. My heart is still in anguish over this decision and how I’m reduced to a part-time parent. Of all the downgrades caused by divorce, losing time with my children is the worst.

While my raise-the-kids-then-die plan was the worst, it relied on my kids. Not having them full-time is a significant part of this identity loss. My weekends, my house, my time, and my friendships, all revolved around parenting. While I had interests and made plans outside of my kids, they were always the central core of my life.

Now I don’t have that. And I feel lost. Everything feels…pointless. When I have my kids, my brain mentally counts down to their departure. The birth of a child should never come with a clock indicating when you’re a parent and when you’re not. I feel pathetic having a system to buy milk that coincides with custody because otherwise, I’m stuck with an expired jug. Just thinking about not always having milk in my fridge as an indicator of the lack of time with my kids makes me bawl.

I’m bored. Because of the lack of funds, I’m not pulling the stereotype of the divorced woman at a restaurant on the beach with a book. I’m at home, scouring the freezer for something I don’t want to eat because I need to save money and then sitting on the couch either crying or aimlessly watching TV. Even worse, I’ve pushed off responsibilities because my motivation plummeted. It’s not that I have the time to watch TV. It’s because I don’t care to do anything else other than watch TV.

In all honesty, it’s not even TV. It’s surfing the internet and watching endless TikToks about Johnny Depp’s trial. I’m at a point where even TV takes too much motivation.

I still exercise, only because I’m obsessed with my weight. As anyone with disordered eating knows, weight obsession is merely a distraction from the real issues in one’s life.

When I moved out, I vowed to give myself six months’ grace. That ended in April. My lack of motivation and life direction has crippled me. I have enough energy to feed my kids and attend social events. The latter involves buying clothes off Amazon, wearing them for two hours, and then returning because I sure as hell don’t have fifty bucks to spend on a dress (yes, you can be pissy at me for being the asshole who does this. I deserve it.)

This is a blaring sign that I need therapy. I’m the poster child for an adult adrift in life with only a scrap of her former life as a raft. Except therapy is an additional effort between getting it set up with my insurance and finding someone who is a suitable match. Unlike dentists, you can’t pick the first therapist on the list and have it all work out.

I write this as I sit on my bed with my daughter watching YouTube on an iPad in her room and my son watches YouTube on the TV downstairs. Parent Of The Year over here, using her limited time with her children to isolate herself and write a brain dump on Medium.