Divorce is the “first time” you really hope you’ll never have. You fall in love, you get married. Are things perfect? Never. But in the nearly five months since my husband left, I have been bombarded by stories of others as blindsided as I was by the pain, the process and the sudden end to a contract you planned to keep til death did you part- not til something else looked better. And so I want to write about it.
What this blog is not:
I am not here to destroy my ex-husband’s life. I’m not here to shame him or make him realize he never should have left me. I will not mention him by name, but I will tell you: some of the details of our divorce on his side are ugly, from my perspective. I have spent five and a half years with a man constantly sure that not only was I judging him negatively, I was also always sure that I was right. I would say one of the biggest issues in our marriage was his total inability to understand that I was fully aware of my own fallibility. So to any of you who read this and think “Oh, how one-sided,” let me assure you- it IS one-sided: mine. I will endevour to give the absolute truth of the situation, but perspective colors everything. If you truly want his side- find him and ask him.
What this blog is:
This is half theraputic, half hopefully to shed some light on at least one person’s unvarnished reaction to divorce. If you are considering divorce, going through divorce- I hope my life can serve as an example of a possible reality- good and bad, desolate and hopeful, lonely and fulfilled.
So- To begin:
It has been four months and three weeks since my husband walked out on me, and today I decided to move to Maui. The cliche of it makes me a little ill; divorced twenty-something gets her groove back on tropical beaches, learns ex-husband was actually demonic. I don’t know what will happen. I don’t know if I’m going to blow all of my money. I’m 26 years old, and I have never made an major decision in my adult life without caring and considering how it would affect my marriage. I’m absolutely terrified.
Sunday, Monday, Tuesday… Forever
But let us go back a few months, to the first weekend of december, 2007. There was lovely weather in Long Beach, CA. I had been, for some strange reason, obsessively looking forward to Christmas all year. We had arranged to take a whole week off of our jobs and stay with my family in Northern California. I only got to visit them a few times a year, for two or three days at a time, so this was a huge deal to me. I had already bought two of my husbands christmas presents, after heavy consideration and much shopping: A beautiful, pricy ice-cream maker, and a book of 1000 ice-cream recipes. I wrote the card- “We’ll work our way through the book, one by one”.
That Sunday, we spent the day decorating our tree. I went crazy and did most of the apartment: garlands, lights, snowy candles, Vince Guaraldi on itunes. It was picturesque, homey.
Monday, we skipped out on work and went to Disneyland. Having just renewed our annual passes, I was anxious to see the Christmas decorations before the crowds hit later in the month. We rode our favorites, watched the fireworks. I particularly remember that he dragged me over to Snow White’s wishing well, to sing him the Snow White song. He dragged me over. I asked him, months later- WHY would you do that. His answer? “Let’s call it habit.”
On Tuesday, he had the morning off, and I had to work. He dropped me off in the morning, told me he couldn’t wait to cuddle and talk. I told him to enjoy his morning off, rest up, I’d take care of him tonight and make dinner, run him a bath. We texted all day- normal jokes, happy messages.
He came home at about 2 pm that afternoon. I was curled on the couch, watching “Love, Actually”, just ordered from netflix. I hugged him and was so happy: an afternoon of cuddling and movies!
“I’ve been thinking about my problems,” he said. I grinned “And you’ve decided they’re all my fault?”
“Actually, yes.”
That was how my husband told me he was leaving. There would be no counseling, no discussions, no tries. We had a long-standing deal: If one of us wanted to leave, we would do everything else first- books, crisis counseling- anything and everything. He would do none of it. It was, he said “With a great many backward glances,” but he was done. He was 27, and miserable with his life, and it was my fault. He packed a bag and left.
There are no words to describe the panic and horror, the nausea and shock of those moments. Neither of us believed in divorce, unless in cases of abuse or adultery. We had plans for next week, next month. I had begged and pleaded my way into the time off at work. We had been planning a trip to Hawaii for October 2008, for our 5 year anniversary. Mere weeks before, I had said “It doesn’t feel like we’ll really get there. I have this weird feeling we won’t go.”
“Of course we will,” he calmed me. “We’ll go, and see how far we’ve come since our honeymoon.”
Also later, he announced that our Christmas plans, buying the tree, and the trip to Disneyland were a calculated plan: It was his intention to blindside me with the divorce. He was too afraid I would talk him out of it, if I wasn’t totally consumed by shock and confusion. This strange, pre-meditated and frankly creepy information, more than anything else, made it clear to me: I had no idea what this man was doing.
I flew to Northern California that night, having no friends in the area, and being unable to stay in a house so decorated and full of us. I called him maybe twenty times between the moment he left and the moment I boarded the plane. I left message after message. I begged him to just pick me up at the airport and we’d talk it out. I begged and begged and begged. I was unabashedly pathetic. I did it all wrong, according to any “save your marriage, stop your divorce” book. There comes a point for me, where I am incapable of acting. This was pain of an unbearable magnitude.
The biggest shock of having a spouse betray you is multilayered: This is supposed to be the person who, no matter what, will be standing by you in your darkest moments. When one person leaves, not only are you thrust into that dark place, you are totally alone. And even worse, the person who should be holding your hand is the culprit.
A spouse is the one family member we actually choose to include in our life. Yes, you can decide to have kids- but you don’t really know who they are until they are born. With a husband or a wife, you get the opportunity to suss out who they are, what they want, what you feel for them. Then, you get to stand in front of a room full of people and maybe a deity or two, and say- this is now my family, as inseperable from me as my parents or my siblings, as important to me as myself. I wil tell you in total honesty- on December 4, 2007 I was fully and completely aware of those words, and if not blindingly happy, content and fulfilled by the life I had chosen with my husband.
Apparently I’d made a pretty big mistake somewhere along the way.
