Smile Sis, life is just waiting on you

When you get a divorce, you worry. How am I going to pay bills? How am I going to repair the van? What will people at church think and how are they going to act? Do I care? Then you focus on how you failed. The day before I filed these were my thoughts. However, on the day I filed I realized that women like me have a whole different reality – we are alone. We have no close friends. There will be no one deciding whose friend they will be, mine or his. There’s no shoulder for my tears. I needed contact with people I knew wouldn’t judge me, so I text my brothers and called my sister. She encouraged me that I was doing the right thing; that this will give me a chance to be happy, but I couldn’t touch her. I needed to look in her eyes. I sat in my car searching my brain for one person to share my sense of loss. I wanted someone to hug. Someone to listen. What do I mean by women like me? I spent 29 years married to a man who was abusive, mentally and for a while physically. For reasons not to be discussed here, he wasn’t able to make and keep friends. When I had a friend visit he was in the middle of everything: our conversations, projects, or he pouted about being ignored. I learned to have my friends over when he was working, but when I went to work that was no longer an option. Over time, my friends dwindled away. As I drove to work feelings and thoughts rushed into my head. Are you crazy? There’s no future for you! Is this better than staying? Is this my life now? For months I prayed, planned, debated, and agonized. I dreamt of the sense of relief that would come on this day – but instead, I felt isolated and overwhelmed. After work I attended group, watched a movie with my children, trying to adjust to what I was sure to become the new normal. As I crawled into bed, my phone lite up. It was a text from my brother, Matt, saying “Smile, Sis. Life is just waiting on you.” Then I realized I needed to find my life, instead of waiting for it to find me, I needed to find……’me’.