"Divorce is Final" Anniversary

 

 

Feb. 11, 2015

Four years ago today the document that officially ended my marriage was signed by a judge in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

I didn’t receive it in the mail until a month later, on March 14, because I had moved twice since I left him. But February 11 is a day of celebration for me.

I won’t lie when I say my knees buckled a little and I felt like I had just hit a brick wall when I opened that envelope and read the contents. It might sound cliché but that’s exactly what it feels like when you receive a shock like that.

I was married for thirty-three years. In fact, I left him on the day of our thirty-third anniversary. Those years of marriage meant something to me, and though the dream had died (a gruesome death), I still got that shock. That’s not how I thought I would react.

I had been put through hell the whole year of 2010, which I call the longest year of my life—and it was. It seemed like each day was a month and each month was a year. I longed to get out and leave my former, pathetic life and move on. I spent the months in counseling, packing, planning, more packing, quitting my job, visiting places I thought I’d never see again, visiting all my friends and family. I was making a clean break. I didn’t want to have to ever see him again. I had to get as far away as possible. Was Utah far enough away?

Once I got over the shock of seeing that document, maybe a few days or weeks or months later, when the news finally sunk in and reality overpowered my loss, I did recover and did my happy dance.  

I was free!

In August, the first anniversary of my flight to freedom, I had a party and invited all my girlfriends who knew me as a married woman beside my husband, and as a happy single woman, without the cumbersome baggage of a Triple A marriage/divorce—Abuse, Adultery, (porn) Addiction.

Free at last! Free at last!

Bittersweet, I guess, in a way, for someone who believed in eternal marriage.