Well, it seems that once more I will put my life out there for the general public to take pleasure in… let me clear the air yet again.
In my last entry I spoke of lost love, new friendships, and of my own aspirations. Today, I want to speak of rediscovered love, old friendships, and of peace.
With the finality of divorce moments away, I was given an opportunity to recap the past year with a lost friend. That very friend being the man I was soon to divorce. We sat on the front steps of a home that we once shared, and as we discussed the journey ahead, we had no choice but to look back; to find some sort of closure.
We spoke of the reasons we found ourselves in this very situation, and played the game, “could of, would of, should of…” for the first time in a long time we sat there, just him and me, as friends and not enemies, and we LISTENED!
As the conversation came to a close we walked into the very house he and I once shared, and a flood of emotions came over me. Tears stained my cheeks, as I was overcome with the feeling of regret, sadness, uncertainty, and love. I was home… or was I?
Throughout the past year we have both hurt, we both ran. He and I found ourselves in another relationship outside of our marriage, and as hard as that was for both of us to conceive, it had to be passable… we were legally separated, on our way to becoming the cliché of divorced couples.
It was in those moments of conversation that I realized something… there was still a lot of unfinished business here.
“No one said it was going to be easy, they only promised it would be worth it.” As I gathered my things to leave, this man… this man I had grown to dislike, the one who hurt me, the one who “bought” me the best pair of running shoes to date, grabbed my hand, and hugged me goodbye. Upon entering my car, he smiled sweetly, and in the sincerest of voices he reminded me that it was still me, I was still the one, and that no matter what… I was loved.
The journey to the condo that evening was a difficult one. I revisited the ups, downs, and completely destructive moments of the past year. I pulled from memory every piece of advice, cross word, tear shed over the situation, and I desperately tried to put the feelings of peace away. We were getting a divorce, and it is what it is. We moved on. We’re happy. We’ll work on a friendship for Bella. No turning back. Period. The End.
Those feelings weren’t erased, and while I remembered the overwhelming journey of the past year, I was soon consumed with the endless possibilities of a new tomorrow.
Our friendly banter continued for many days following, and this was a quaint moment; for the first time in 12 years, Chad and I were friends. We had spent 9 years of marriage going through the motions, forgetting about the love, respect, appreciation. I had the grass is greener plague and he….
The moment came and one final decision had to be made… as my paper arrived in the mail, did I sign or didn’t I? This was a tough decision… he’d been an “asshole”, but to my rude awakening, so had I. Regardless of how we found ourselves in this situation we were both to blame. So, I was forced to ask myself a question… could I walk knowing that I hadn’t given it my all?
Faced with questions of uncertainty, I had to once again revisit our journey. And to my astonishment this is what I realized:
Put the anger, hurt, bitterness aside, and Chad and I both changed. He became a man that I was proud of… successful at work, reading endless books (for those of you who truly know us, this was an incredibly sexy quality), a good Dad. He came to me one day and said, “If nothing good comes out of this divorce I do know this… it’s made me a better Dad. I never knew what being a Dad was really like… I let you do it all, and now Bella and I have this most incredible friendship.” That statement alone spoke volumes, and melted my heart… he didn’t have to tell me that, I had witnessed it with my own two eyes.
I was given an opportunity I had never had. I lived on my own, struggled by myself, and lived a very free spirited life… I got to lay out in the grass, and to my surprise, it wasn’t any greener than my own. I did things I never would have, settled for things I never thought possible, and I lost people (you know who you are) that I was certain I couldn’t live without. I ran the equivalent of a New York City marathon, and I did it on my own. There was a lot of self-discovery needed, I had spent most of my life searching… in my search over the past year I found “peace” or a jaded perception of it. I found people who truly have made a difference in my life, I found a home… but, in saying that I wasn’t able to let go… to fully give, to turn a cheek on the chapters prior to the current.
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