Day 20/31 - A difficult time in your life

 

In what feels like a previous life I was married.  I had been with my husband for my entire twenties and was fast moving away from being thirty.  I'm not sure why, but I hit thirty and stopped in my tracks and wondered what I was doing with my life and where I was headed.  I was uneasy with the path my life was taking but when you have been with someone for such a long time it is a daunting decision to make to call it a day and start over.

I realised that we were moving in different directions with our lives rather than the same, but me being me, I stuck with it in the hope we were merely going through a rough patch.  All in all it took me two years to come to the conclusion that things were not working and to admit it to myself.  To admit I had failed in what I had previously thought was to be forever hurt.  With hindsight, I see that the relationship was doomed from the start but I was young, headstrong and stubborn.  I should have listened to all the little warning bells that had gone off in my head over the years but I had chosen to tell myself that I would be alright and my life wasn't that bad.

We did everything we could to try and save the marriage so that if the worst came to the worst we could hand on heart say that we had given it our best.  A holiday - I hated our final holiday together, it was truly awful and from that I never want to go there ever again.  A trial separation - I realised I was much happier alone and it was not nearly as tortuous as that feeling of loneliness when you are in someone's company.  In actual fact it was liberating to be on my own.  Counselling - the more we talked the more blindingly obvious it became that we were not working.  We cried many a tear but both agreed that we definitely did not want to get to a stage where we hated one another.  We had had good times together and did not want to ruin those memories with bitterness and hate.  Neither of us were that way inclined and I am grateful we both were adult about divorce.

Of course I had my fears.  What would people think?  Would I cope on my own?  What if I stayed single forever?  Was I a difficult person to love?  Etc, etc, etc.  Many, many scary things of a future I may like less than being in a marriage that was not working.  We started divorce proceedings and by this time had gotten to the stage in our relationship where we were encouraging each other to meet new people.  Weird it may seem but that was who we were; there was enough love left to wish the other luck in finding happiness again.  

It was one of the most difficult times in my life and I was never truly convinced I had the strength to follow it through but I did.  I came out of it a stronger person and ultimately it led me to where I am now.