I used to have a very different life. I had a husband, we were a family. I had someone who lived with me and loved me. Full time. I had a future I was counting on. A lifetime of companionship, family vacations, milestones, laughter, and love.
All gone.
I love him still, but I have come to understand that I love the memories and the man he used to be before everything went to hell.
I don’t know who he is now. At all.
Goodbye to waking up every single morning with you. Goodbye to having you to come home to, share about my day with. No more daily touch, check-ins, good mornings, or good-nights. Goodbye to ‘I love you’ every day. No more finding you in the middle of the night next to me in bed if I can’t sleep. Goodbye to kisses before leabing for work and coffee on the nightstand.
Goodbye to all the laughter and screwed up jokes. To the planning of vacations, the missing you when you were away on business trips, the scheduling of phone calls when we were in different time zones. Goodbye to the crazy family stories, the obligatory visits, the drunken Holidays with you driving me around. The movie marathon weekends, wine nights and patio days. Goodbye to couples in the kitchen and you telling me I talk about work too much. Goodbye to the magnolia trees and the future tree that never will never be. Goodbye to talking about the future and hopes and dreams.
Goodbye to all of the memories. Good and bad. I won’t get to see the person you have become. I won’t ever get to have another vacation with you. The plans and dreams we had are gone. The plans and dreams we had for our family, our future children, gone.
It is all gone. Forever.
So. Many. Memories.
I am coming to realize that we drank the proverbial Kool-Aid without knowing it. We bought into the societal trap of the relationship escalator; find your ‘soulmate’, get married, buy a house, get an education and a good job. We are told that if you do these things, you will be HAPPY.
But instead, life just happened to us while we were practically asleep.
We were asleep.
Everything was just “fine.”
But it wasn’t.
There is more. A lifetime of more. But I have reached my limit. It hurts too much. Which makes me believe writing these things out is the exact right thing to do.
Divorce is deep, writhing, bottomless, and exhausting.
And somehow, even with the pits and the bumps, I am doing just fine.
