Aww, kiwi…I’m so sorry to see you are still in this place. Girl, you know I’ve been around this mountain more than a few times! 
So rather than give any advice, let me just tell you how infinitively better my life is post D.
The day he walked out was one of the worst of my life. Well, really, I don’t know that’s entirely true - because he had abandoned me SO many times. It was probably more some day in the weeks and months that followed - where I both realized he wasn’t coming back…and that even if he did, there was just too much to heal. I don’t remember the day or even round about time…I’d say the D realization was more a slow screen fade to black. I couldn’t have imagined anything would get better. Hell, I was still just struggling with some ill-conceived notion that this was NOT how my life was suppose to be. I was approaching 50, hadn’t worked outside the home in almost 15 years, and was only skilled in a job that I felt I had rather put a bullet in my brain (seriously) than have to return to. I spent weeks into months in my pjs and coloring all day in an adult coloring book. Day after day - sometimes only getting one shower in for the whole week (and that was only because I forced myself).
But strength and resolve grew in that quiet and disorganized time. For the first time in the duration of my marriage, I became ready to really look at my XH’s behavior - and what I realized was equally disorienting. But it was the truth - for the first time in a very long time - and truth has a way of lifting you out of the situation. As my willingness to look at it came (because at this point I had nothing left to lose) so did my clarity and ultimately direction. Indeed, the truth does set you free.
I wouldn’t go back into that marriage for love or money now. I’m pretty sure I’d just take actual cyanide if I was forced back into it. I have absolutely no idea how I survived it - and even more so, how I maintained any level of sanity. It was so convoluted and fucked up that I no longer even yearn to understand. Distance is what I want now most of all; when it comes to him, it’s the only thing I care about.
I got an entry level job in a brand new field. I started at $16/hr and mostly was charged with keeping a seat warm. It wasn’t what I wanted, many days felt like a failure. But I focused on the larger purpose - finding my own footing - and I’m now, three years later, several rungs up the ladder and making nice money and respected for my skill set. In some ways, the thing that held me in the marriage for the longest (financial dependence) - and the thing I most feared having to establish - has been the most healing aspect of this whole journey. I could have never imagined such would be the case.
As I progressed through that and the actual drawn out divorce, I also lost both my parents (I’m an only) as well as my beloved dog - all within the time span of a year. Talk about feeling like I was climbing Mt Everest! But it also gave me the opportunity to do a bucket list item that I had assumed was just forever off the table - flip a house. So I set out on my own - as in, ALL alone - and disbursed the 40+ years of content of my childhood home as well as to remodel to generate an additional $100k in gain (and this was before the housing explosion, probably would have been close to $200k otherwise). Friends and family thought I was nuts - both in the remodel and in that particular market - and therewere tons and tons of tears along the way, for SO many reasons. But I both grieved and healed in that process. And when I wasn’t grieving or healing then I was just flat out exhausted - and between all that, I moved forward in ways that I can now only see in hindsight.
I’d take either/both of my parents back today…but they left me a substantial inheritance that has given me such security in their absence. The thing that I had MOST worried about worked itself out in ways could have never imagined - nor would have given that loss. But it is what it is…and Life provided in its own way. I paid off my house a couple of years ago, was able to help one of my sons with his own down-payment on a house, paid cash for a new car (from the money I generated in the flip) and am now considering a remodel on my home. (We were looking to build just six months prior to him walking out, had been putting in bids on land - so having my dream home also felt like it had been lost.). I work now for the mental stimulation and the appreciation - which ironically seems to come in spades. Never could have guessed that I would actually ENJOY working - and I do!
All this to say, the things that I most feared - what kept me in that dead-end marriage for so long - never came to fruition by divorcing. I have all the things I wanted…but I have them now with security; there’s no longer any little boy running around with matches. I do what I want to do when I want to do it. And that freedom stands in such contrast to what I once had that I now protect it fiercely. I’ve most definitely moved from being afraid I will die alone to being VERY selective with who I allow in my life. I absolutely do not miss one ounce of that dead weight that I carried for years.
I could have never imagined feeling this way. But I am thankful every single day to be out of that relationship. I had no idea how bad it really was until I REALLY got out of it. I am SO thankful that I did not live out the rest of my life/die in that marriage! ❤️
[This message edited by truthsetmefree at 8:23 PM, Saturday, September 3rd]
