Monday, 8 February 2016.
Day 50
During her lunch break at school, Anna sits down to scribble in her diary.
Dear Diary,
Long time no write! Sorry.
There’s something I’ve been reflecting about and want to register here.
Betrayal.
Awful word, but intrinsic in human nature.
I remember just last year, a month before moving out of our last home together…
…I had already signed my rental apartment’s contract and was spending my afternoons and evenings looking for good deals to buy furniture and whatnot. (That part was fun, tbh. I adore moving and decorating. I’m good at it! I love looking for solutions).
Anyways, the shopping kept me busy and focused on practicalities for the near future, instead of the immediate pre-separation…
…valley
of
death.
As you can imagine, I’d go from excitement and exhilaration to deep sadness.
Agonizing joy.
Energetic exhaustion.
Blue fun.
Fearful hope, dreaded freedom.
Oxymoronic paradoxes.
The silent screams of my soul felt pretty loud to me, at times. Good grief!
Some say that people get divorced too easily nowadays, but sincerely? I don’t believe that most people take separation lightly. It’s scary and painful! They say it’s like amputating a leg.
More like amputating a part of your heart. :(((
For better or for worse, we were together for 22 years. Neither he nor I took it lightly, see? Even though it wasn’t ’til death – at the end of the end.
I wish we had divorced eight years ago, when he first said he wanted it. We wouldn’t have wasted so much of each other’s time and would have avoided more excruciating heartbreak and some other drastic measures (no comments)…
Nevertheless…
I am grateful we were able to part in one piece.
Ops! Part in peace!
Where was I?
Yes, during that pre-separation month, I’d feel relieved and then anguished. Little did I know it was going to turn out to be a cruel kindness – what he was doing to me (at least that’s my hope now).
If only people knew! They’d divorce sooner.
But people with bad marriages fear. So, they make haste s…l….o…..w……l…….y…………..
They’ve got to go through the process to progress.
OK! Be wise, don’t rush it too much. Prepare the way for a (better?) future.
As I was saying… at times I’d cry in the shower. I’d let go and then the next second hold on for dear life.
I’d love him with all my hate.
I’d agonize and think about betrayal.
“Do you already have somebody else?”
“Anna, I’ve already hurt you so much in this marriage. There’s no reason for me to hurt you more right now.” — The holy sinner – damned saint would repeat!
Not unlike me…
Some of the church people we know judge him, but I’ll respect him for not remaining a hypocritical chaplain in the end. For finally having the courage to be true to himself.
And give me my freedom to (try) to find love again.
(Maybe the painful journey of self-love first?)
It’s always better to deal with the truth, no matter the blow. I’ll choose hearing the honest truth 90 out of 100 times.
The truth shall set you free – true – free to fly the dreadful flight of freedom.
How can we make the best decisions for our own well-being without the truth??? People have no right to keep us prisoners of lies.
Nonetheless…
…”Speak the truth with love”.
Would it have been better to stay in the bad marriage and feel alone together?
♥️ I’d much rather be together alone someday. Just the two of us! Mr. Bf and me. ♥️
As I was saying… I’d cry in the shower thinking about betrayal. I felt so betrayed!
Yet, what was the betrayal??
Was it that he was jumping in bed with another lady?
For me, the greatest betrayal was not that.
He fell in love. O amor é lindo.
As Dr. Helen Fischer says, “love is a powerful brain system, more powerful than sex drive. It comes from primordial parts of the brain – way below the cortex. It gives you the energy, the focus, ecstasy, the despair and the motivation. To win life’s greatest prize – a mating partner”.
Aye, no!
(Btw, she’s studied brain scans of couples who have been romantically in love after 21 years together. It can happen!)
“Passion makes people climb the highest mountains and sail the raging seas. Romantic love inspires poets, musicians, commoners”.
Its memories make people write books. 😇
The Bible says love covers a multitude of sins.
Then, what was the betrayal?
The betrayal for me was this:
How can he prefer not to have me in his life? To just erase me, swipe me out.
After everything. All the memories. All the battles, victories, photo albums and family memories. All the patience and forgiveness. All the support and growth. All the emotions!
All that investment in vain?
How can someone actually find they’re upgrading their lives by taking me out of it??? His best friend for over half his life… To think he’s better off without me than with me? Unfathomable.
I felt like garbage. Rejection was the betrayal!
That actually felt like death. A resurrection I should have welcomed?
Why not sooner then? It would have saved me some of my youth.
And what about our kids? They say divorce is harder on teenagers than children.
Wow.
But no problem.
Now I know his cruel kindness was for my best, too.
A passionless marriage is not true for me. Holding on is just wishful thinking. Wasted years? I think so…
Men and women out there: pleeease do not hold on to someone who doesn’t love you. Please do not fear. You deserve to be loved with all of your lover’s flawed human heart. Everyone does.
Mutuality!
But, silver linings, silver linings, Anna! Don’t get depressed now.
Everything happens for a purpose. Or at least you can give it a purpose and make it meaningful.
I sure am turning my pain into something beautiful.
In this long, long diary entry, my mind has been wandering everywhere – itinerant from place to place. I can break it down later, but I did warn you in the title.
And it does happen with pre-separation. Consider separating, do it, and your mind will thus wonder and wander while your heart rides a scary merry-go-round.
OK, long story short – finally:
Divorce??
More like amputating half of your heart!
Hey, maybe I need a heart transplant!
A new heart? I like that.
I’m gonna think of divorce as an open-heart surgery from now on. Painful, risky, extreme. I’ll need time for convalescence… But not alone, please…?
The Divorce Paradox = a seemingly false, but significant step.
Anna, you’ll get a new heart – hope for a stronger one!
You’ll still retain your brain, your memories, your soul, your you. But you’ll have the chance to start over.
Bitter sweet. New beginnings. A crash landing? New-found grace.
And an opportunity to be true. To love again and do it much, much better.
© 2017 rf
Obs. Day 50 of an oxymoronic new life.
http://gtotd.blogspot.fi/2007/06/oxymoronic-paradox-wisdom-of-yogi-isms.html
The Chronicles of a Happy Divorcée 
Heartrending.
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Beautifully written and moving. Divorce is like a death. My first marriage ended in divorce. So painful. I had two little girls, ages 4 and 1. I also believed in romantic love and thought I would find that again. However, I learned over the years (I’m 67 now and remarried for 40 years) that only God, and he alone, could give me the kind of love I craved. I wanted it from my daughters and my husband. But they are human, with big problems of their own. We all love each other, but things are said that wound. My daughters have their own lives, and that is good. We talk and see each other.
My husband can hardly talk with me without blaming me for something. It crushes my soul. He doesn’t want to spend time doing things together. He doesn’t like to cuddle and talk about the day. Most of what I say or do is wrong or not good enough in his eyes. Yet, I know he loves me and would die for me if that was required. He was raised with no love from his parents, and that pretty well ruined things for me.
Well, what I am trying to say, is don’t put all your eggs in a man basket. They will probably get broken. See if spending your time talking with God and reading about him will be enough, without a man. I got desperate for love and found out God is enough. He is really the only true, good and loyal friend I have. I can trust him not to hurt me. I look at the men in my family and know they are too messed-up and totally different from their wives to give them real happiness or understanding.
Well, I won’t comment any longer about men. I know what I am writing is depressing, and maybe you will find a good man one day. I just wanted to warn you.
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Sad! But yes, the I am is everything. 😀 S2
Hope to hear what you think of chapter 57! Br.
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Thanks for the explanation, I was really puzzled about the oxymoronic paradoxes (the true speaking of an English teacher).
I was also one half of wasting some 10 years of two persons lives, and divorce is really a painful, dreadful experience, that comes with so much fear and anxiety that postponing it one day at a time for such a long time seemed to be the better option. How foolish this thinking was.
Again, blessings to you for having a decent post-divorce relationship with your ex-husband.
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The funny thing is I came up with the oxymoronic paradoxes. Had never heard the two together. Decided to google it and voilá.
Hope more people will realize that it’s not nice to have your life, love, heart wasted with wishful thinking if the marriage is indeed bad. But fear does hold people back…
Hindsight, hindsight. 😦
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Indeed, one definition of creativity is to combine two previously unrelated concepts into something new and meaningful. And a thought is no less creative just because it has crossed another human mind before.
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😀
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Reblogged this on Debatably Dateable.
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Yay!
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Yay!
What country do you blog from, my friend?
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As a somewhat new divorcee, I can relate to so much of this. Beautiful thoughts about loss, love, and starting over.
I am so thankful that my ex and I have a close friendship or else, yes, I would absolutely feel discarded. How can you erase someone you shared almost 2 decades and 2 children with? It’s a devastating thought.
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How beautifully put, my friend! I want to follow you, too (I will try. Sometimes there is an error message, when I do).
Strength to you on this phase. There are probably be many up and downs (I still have mine from time to time), but we can do nothing against the truth, and perfect love conquers alllll things.
My blog is a book, with a beginning (the Prologue, Introduction, Chapters 1, 2…), and a clear end in sight. So, maybe you want to check it out from the start? I would adore to have your thoughts on some chapters, your own experience. What is relatable to you? What is not?
Have a peaceful, merry December! S2
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Oooo, yes! Thanks for the tip. I didn’t know your blog was a book. I’ll def start from the beginning. 🙂
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