Happliy Ever After: My thoughts on Separation and Divorce

Someone very close to me is currently at a crossroad in her marriage.  She is done and is ready to move forward with the process of looking at ending her marriage.  She is in a hell that you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy and her struggle has prompted me to write this blog.  I want to try and share a bit of my story in hopes that I my experience will assist her in going through her own.  One of the most important things to remember when you or a loved one is going through such a thing is that this is a long painful process.  You don't just wake up and decide to end a marriage. 

I was going through my separation and divorce I realized, who would want this?  For those few who questioned what I was doing, I asked myself this.  Who wants to admit that their marriage is crap?  Who wants to stand up and tell everyone that they don't live in the perfect little world that they desperately wanted others to believe they did.  Who wants to put their children through the pain and heartbreak of a unhealthy living situation?  No one does.  In order for me to have gotten to the point that I went ahead with actually divorcing my husband of twelve years, the father of my four beautiful children, I truly had to go to hell and back. 

If I truly want to be honest with myself, I do believe that we were too young to get married.  At twenty one and twenty three we were babies, and we were having a baby.  Because of my childhood situation, because of the dysfunction of my home growing up, I believed that I was wise beyond my years and in ways I was.  I had experienced more heartache in my first twenty years then many of my friends.  In second grade I was taking my siblings to the neighbors to save them from the sadness at home.  So by the time I was faced with the choice to get married, I thought I was ready.  I thought wrong. 

Young love is not mature love.  You need time to grow into yourself and become the true you.  By the time I was twenty six I had four children, five and under, had moved from the Midwest to New Mexico and had to put college and my career on hold for my family.  My Ex earned his Masters when Savannah was just a baby and his career took precedent to mine simply because he was able to make more money than I was.  I had four children to take care of and a household to run.  I worked too, starting at the company I still work for, Garden Critters, when Sage was just three months old.  I also worked for a non profit, The Rio Rancho Education Foundation and a fine art gallery.  I was proud of the work I did and that I was able to contribute to my family.  Then because of choices my Ex made while at the workplace, choices that affected our family and my trust, we moved again, to Colorado.

The move was hard.  I was in a new city where I knew no one and I missed my family.  However I was able to enroll back in school and finally finish my degree from Colorado State University.  With four children at home, this was no small task and will forever be one of the things I am most proud of. 

What does all this have to do with divorce?  It's to make the point that while we struggled in our marriage, while the cheating, fighting and dysfunction took place, life went on.  I had opportunities to get out, opportunities that I didn't take because I had made a commitment before God, because I had children, because I had already sacrificed so much and if I said good-bye, wouldn't that have all been for nothing?  I had a lot of issue with the fact that in some ways over a third of my life was about to be thrown in the garbage, discarded like trash.  I struggled with this, but as the true dysfunction of our marriage came to a head in the beginning of September 2009, I knew I had to say enough is enough.  I had finally reached my breaking point.  I was done.

I was lucky enough to have immense support from my family and friends.  They were tired of seeing me sad and heartbroken.  They had watched this movie play out from the very beginning and they were ready to be my support as I reached out to them in my darkest hour.  However, the sad truth is they still don't know the half of it.  They don't know of all the events that went on behind closed doors that I never shared with anyone. That is one very important thing that people have to remember, you never know what happens when others are not around.  To not support someone during such a hard decision is to also disregard the pain they have had to get to in order to reach this point.   

One personal example happened when Saxton was just a baby.  My Ex came home from work one day and proceeded to tell me about an indiscretion that had happened while he was at a work retreat.  The most heart wrenching thing about it was that Saxton was just four weeks old, and it was over my birthday.  While my sister was helping me clean my tile floor as a birthday present, he was propositioning his co-worker.  I remember thinking that I was done then.  But I didn't tell my family and after the prompting of those that knew, we moved on, for our family.  Unfortunately this was one example of events that took place that we just couldn't get past.  I don't often give examples of such things in my blog, for several reasons, maybe the biggest one being that it is really hard to lay out your most vulnerable moments for all to read.  But the point I want to make from this example, is that this was a long process, it didn't happen over night or even over the period of months, it was years.  As those events compile, the voice in the back of your head that tells you enough is enough gets louder, gets stronger.  It wasn't one thing that led me to divorce, it was hundreds of actions, words and heartbreaking memories that led me to such a difficult decision. 

We all want happily ever after. If anyone said otherwise, I wouldn't believe them. Others might claim there isn't such a thing. I believe there is.  It took me most of my life, but I have finally experienced it.  There is a world that exists where I am loved, respected and valued as a person. There is a world where I am safe to truly be who I am, show all my beautiful colors, even my imperfections and not fear being attacked. I remember one day I was talking to my baby sister Colleen and I was telling her how happy I was, giving her examples of the sweet things that Jerry did for me. I could hear her smiling through the phone as she said how happy she was for me, but that I needed to realize that what I was experiencing was normal, the way things should be.  I hadn't ever lived normal, so I guess it has been an adjustment to learning what that is.  If I could share anything with my children, my friends and my family, it would be that yes, life isn't perfect, but we still need to believe that our own version of happily ever after does exist and we deserve to experience it.