Fake it till you feel it... I am finally feelin' it

So its been a while since I’ve talked very specifically about the divorce healing process.  I’m coming up on my divorce anniversary in a few short months and thought I’d share a bit of where I am now and a little about the hurdles I’ve had to cross in the past year to get here.  I wrote a post on divorce healing early on that is a good starting point of this journey I’ve taken. 

Luckily for me, divorce healing has been a lot like childbirth and the early months of kid raising - intensely overwhelming and emotionally draining, but the associated pain has dulled over time.  I attribute this mostly to the attitude I adopted early on in the process, a conscious choice of forgiveness.  When the person you’ve trusted inherently for 14 years of your life leaves you for another, forgiveness is an incredibly challenging attitude to maintain.   I had to fight past thoughts of “how could he after all I’ve done for him?”  and “she knew he was married with kids…”  Even though they both played a part in this, there were definitely times when I held her more accountable.  I felt like this was an unwritten rule in the handbook of being a woman and you just don’t cross that line.   I mentally called her every bad word under the sun, and probably made up a few new ones…   I reminded myself daily… hourly, to forgive.  It was a choice that I had to make over and over and over again.   I begged and pleaded with God to help me get past the anger and sense of betrayal.  I prayed that one day my choice of forgiveness would be sustained without conscious effort.  I felt like I meant it when I said it each time, but then an issue would come up with kids or custody or child support and I would feel like I was right back at Ground Zero.    

One of the things I had to keep coming back to during the early months was that I have no control over how Ryan chooses to parent our kids.  Having been the predominate caregiver for the 14 years we were together, this lack of control was a very, very hard pill to swallow.  But I also recognize over this past year Ryan has become more of a father to our kids than I feel he ever was while we were married.  Recognizing this change has made the divorce journey worth every step to me.  I also recognized early on that if we were able to co-parent in a way that put our kids before our issues, we could find a way to work through the logistics of two houses/two families and make the best of a bad situation.  There were definitely a lot of ups and downs on this path over the last year, but I strived to really ask myself what was driving my actions.  As each new hurdle came up, was it really worth a battle or were my motivations driven from a desire for retribution?  It forced me to look at those ugly parts of ME and remind myself how I wanted to live MY life.   It meant ALOT of compromise.  It meant taking the high road (even though there were days, weeks, months of bitching sessions to my mom and girlfriends….)  I’m not going to say I was successful staying ON the high road all the time without fail, because that would be a lie.   But I do feel I did my best to keep things as non-confrontational as possible and continued/continue to put my kids first and foremost.

Another area I grew to recognize over this past year was that Ryan and I are pathetic at communicating with one another, especially written communication.   The tone of a text or email can so easily be distorted and can drive tenuous relationships like ours to a breaking point.  One of the things we set up early on was a monthly “kid meeting” which I think has been crucial for us to mitigate these communication barriers.  We meet for coffee for an hour each month to discuss kid issues/concerns and to process our monthly financial reconciliation.  In the beginning these meetings were TERRIBLE.  Stressful, awkward, wounding….  I dreaded them.  I longed to cancel and would even dream up excuses for why we should cancel...   But I knew for our kids it was imperative we figure out how to get to a state where we could talk through kid topics.  I refused to be the reason we weren’t successful at getting there.  For probably the first 6 months of meetings, I spent much of the hour trying not to say what I was thinking, which is hard when this is someone you’ve been unfiltered with your whole life together.  But each meeting that went “well” was another part of the healing process for me.  By this fall, I could actually hold a conversation with Ryan and discuss his girlfriend and his new life and not be a wreck afterwards.  I learned to sit next to him at a soccer game and its no longer miserable or awkward anymore. We even took Bella trick-or-treating together for Halloween with mutual friends.  Definitely a lot of progress made!

I’ve also passed what has always seemed to me to be the FINAL milestone of this process… meeting HER…  Erin.  Yes, she has a real name.  And I can say it now without associating a lot of other names with it.  The meeting was brief and not nearly as uncomfortable as I thought it would be, kind of anti-climactic really.  I think that, above all things, is an indication of how far I’ve come on this journey.  In the past 5 months I’ve definitely crested the forgiveness mountain and feel like I can actually say that I do wish Ryan and Erin well.  Everyone deserves to find love.  And I know she’s not the monster I once thought she was.  What's even more surprising to me?  I can see MYSELF in her.  A woman with 2 kids... divorced...  lonely....    Having been on my own for almost a year now, I know I’d have reached for a chance at love too, consequences be damned.   And this is where I'm reminded of what a circle life can be and how important it is to not judge others until you've walked the path yourself.  As for me?  I am so very glad to be on this journey of life and grateful that I no longer have to fake it.

"Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world.  Today I am wise, so I am changing myself" ~ Rumi