A Series of Divorces

In Webster's Online Dictionary, this is what I found under "divorce":

n. the legal dissolution of a marriage
v. part, cease or break association with
v. to separate or disunite

When one is married, that person lives in a community, in a neighborhood. Usually there is a home, and friends and church. There is life.

When a divorce between a husband and a wife occurs, that is only the first divorce in a series of divorces.

I have pondered a lot on what my life was many years ago and what my life is now. I lost my home, I lost many friends, I lost my trust in people. This past Christmas I spent the day without my children. Many weekends are spent driving or flying my daughter to her dad's house 4 hours away. Traditional family vacations are a thing of the past...there is no "family" and there is no money. The divorce, or breakdown of my marriage - became the divorce, or breakdown of my life.

I had always loved being a stay at home mother. I usually found other ways to supplement the family income by teaching piano lessons, running after-school care, doing data entry for UPS out of my home, etc. But my main focus, my main happiness, came from being able to raise my children. To be a part of their lives. To organize movie day, or ice cream day, or craft day, or spic-and-span cleaning day. When the children were in school, I enjoyed volunteering there or at the nearby care center. I loved scrap booking with friends, doing book clubs, meeting for lunch. But when a divorce happens, you also divorce from all those things.

Being forced to go to work does not allow for volunteering at the school, or spending time with children on their days off. It does not allow for nurturing of relationships with other wives and mothers. I loved being a friend and having friends. Now any phone conversations are hurriedly done driving to and from the job.

In "the old days" I could talk for hours with friends on the phone - during the day while their husbands were at work. Now, my free time is when their husband is home and they are enjoying their family. Those two different lives don't mesh.

The home I lived in was suppose to be the home I lived in forever. It was large enough to house a growing family. It was on a nice street with amazing neighbors. It was the home my children had grown up in. But when divorce hits, the parents divorce...and then they must divorce the home.

So the divorce with my former husband was only the beginning of a series of divorces. A separation, a disunion of everything I knew and everything I loved.

I don't ever want anyone to experience this level of "divorce". Yet at the same time, I wish people could understand how traumatic the whole thing is. As the statistics continue to rise when it comes to divorce, I continue to become more uneasy. Every time a public official or a celebrity admits to looking away from his wife and children, I relive the devastation that occurred in my life. I feel for those women and those children. I know the road they will have to travel is long and hard and painful. And for each one of those women, who live their lives in the public eye, there are many more "ordinary" women who also fall under scrutiny. No, our faces may not be plastered on the television stations or the tabloids...but we are looked at differently by friends, by family, by church-goers.

Many don't want to think that they treat a divorced woman any different than they do a married woman...but that is not the case. Do I wish I could go back to what I believed to be my happy marriage. Of course, some days that is all I want. To have my life back. But I don't want the life that was a lie. I want the life I thought I was living.

More often than not, I am thankful to be in the space I am in. Even though I don't have anyone to roll over to when I wake up in the middle of the night...even though I rarely cook a decent meal because who is there to feed...even though I carry the burdens alone without a husband to help me shoulder them...I remain grateful. Grateful that my eyes are opened to the plight of many in this world. There are many in this world suffering much worse than I will every be asked to suffer. But I do know great loss. And because of this, my heart and eyes are opened to what suffering is. I am not a victim, I am just a human. A human who has been through one divorce with a man...but who had to also live through the pain of divorce in many other areas as well.

This post is not meant to depress, but to educate. One purpose of trials is to learn compassion. We all walk a rocky road...it is much easier if we choose to hold each other up.