I’m So Happy I Got Divorced

How the pain decreases and joy increases

I call myself Divorce Barbie because when I wasn’t looking, Ken took off with our country camper and Malibu beach house.

Actually, Ken ran off with it all.

I know a few women who say they would never consider divorce after what happened to me. They’d rather stay and take their chances. Preferring a comfortable malaise over the unknown.

I get it.

My divorce was a knockdown, drag-out, never-ending five-year escape.

A bottomless pit of financial and emotional abuse.

In many ways, my life was easier while I was married. Yes, I was miserably unhappy (intentionally redundant here) but most of the time I flew under my husband’s radar.

Asking for a divorce made me a moving target.

It angered him to the point he declared war. To be fair, he had made that declaration during our marital woes. In his words, “You’re never going to win Colleen.”

To which I would respond, “If you believe there’s winning and losing in love, you’ve already lost.”

But that’s the problem with wars.

Both sides are usually fighting for different things.

Silly me was duking it out for love, while my husband went to combat over control and money. Two things he successfully maintained while I was hopelessly and unhappily entangled in his world.

Hence, while he was declaring war it had actually been a stalemate.

Until I was bold enough to leave.

That’s when the big narcissistic guns came out.

I’m not going to lie.

Had I understood what he was capable of, I might not have left. I would have felt too much fear. Or perhaps I would have been smart enough to make a thoughtful and intensive support-laden, financially insulated plan.

If being married made me feel depressed, leaving him made me despondent.

I was terrified.

It was Lord of the Flies scale emotional and financial abuse.

His lack of empathy igniting the mayhem. I was no longer in a fight to save my marriage, but to protect my children. Our world became filled with stress, chaos, and unpredictability.

At the hands of a man who sought to teach me a lesson for leaving him.

This would become his narrative.

Kids if your mother hadn’t ended the marriage there would be plenty of money. The over-burdened man is taken advantage of by the ungrateful woman.

She has broken our home.

In my entire life, I have never experienced the type of fear that accompanies being in the crosshairs of a vengefully abusive individual. I couldn’t concentrate, remember things, or move forward. It was only survival. I either cried myself to sleep or tossed and turned while it evaded me.

If I felt alone in my marriage, I felt abandoned in divorce.

I was in way over my head.

It took a long time to emerge from those shark-infested narcissistic waters.

But I’m on dry land.

The other day, I was munching on a salad at an outdoor cafe. Life is good, I thought. I was struck at the moment. I used to be told how often I used that phrase. I had forgotten. Because it had been years since it crossed my mind let alone my lips.

But life truly is good.

I’m a happy Divorce Barbie.

Do I miss the Malibu beach house? Who wouldn’t?!

But I don’t miss Ken.