With This Ring?

Divorce is never easy. It can be devastating, crippling. It can be freeing and give you a new purpose in your life. Divorce can be many things, but it's never easy. There's nothing easy about looking someone in the face and telling them you just can't continue, or hearing whatever their response is going to be. It's not easy to go to a lawyer and divvy up the life you've built together. It's not easy to tell people and expose your failures.

It's oddly easy for me to write a blog about it, but we're all different.

I've made it because I have no other choice. For a while, it felt like everything around me was crumbling to the ground. Some days I wanted to lay around and sob, but I always had something to do. Life doesn't stop even if I feel like I have. So, I pushed it all down and pretty soon I started to just not feel it any more. 

Divorce isn't easy, but I know we'll both be happier going our separate ways. 

That didn't make it any easier when I gave him my wedding rings. We barely had any contact over several months when he came to collect some of this things. The engagement ring was a family heirloom, and under no circumstances could I keep that from him. So he came over, I handed him the rings, and he left in a hurry since he had plans. I stood there and watched him go, heard his truck start, and listened as the sound grew fainter as he drove away. In the silence I was suddenly aware of my own breathing, and how choked I felt. It was like trying to swallow a pill that just won't go down, leaving a weight in your chest and making you feel like your throat might close.

Handing him the rings he put on my hand felt final. It was a hurdle to get over and a step toward healing, sure. But if you ask anyone that's gone through something like this, the path to acceptance and happiness isn't a gradient from black to white. It's a path in the woods that'll loop around itself, with patches of light and darkness along the way.

People have pointed out I seem different, and in many ways happier. This divorce has been as simple as one could hope. Sometimes, I even call it amicable. It's the impetus to set me on a journey to get out of my comfort zone and find where I need to be.

But it's never easy.