Six Years After Divorce, I’m Declaring Myself Healed!
It feels good not wanting to destroy my old house.
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I just bought a lunch gift certificate for my Ex and her new partner. They’re celebrating their commitment in Maui. Last month they ended up at the same concert as my girlfriend, and they all sat together. During a recent heatwave, I napped in my Ex’s house on my old couch in my old living room. I needed a place to escape the triple-digit temps with our son and shared dog while I waited to pick up our daughter from camp. Our son tinkered nearby without any worry of tension.
It felt good spending peaceful time at my former digs instead of wanting to pull the front porch posts down with my truck, something I had visualized in detail during the early divorce years when resentment filled my veins.
There was a time when people crossed the street to avoid me and the mumbling vitriol flowing from my lips. Drowning in my rage, I often didn’t even realize I was talking. Like many divorcing men and women, I drank too much. I clocked in on a bar stool missing its backrest, broken by the men before me doing their job as the slumped shape in the corner of a local dive bar.
Yes, I convinced myself it was my job to drink it out, cry it out, and pass out.
I wrote about my job in that corner seat. Combatting the anger was hard. I wrote about how anger steals love from myself and my kids. Writing about divorce helped me process and gave me goals.
Sometimes I’d write things down and not live and practice what I wrote until later. My divorce writings give me a history of who I was. Writing reminds me of lessons I’ve already learned.
I saw therapists in the early days, but paying to hear standard cliches from old white guys pissed me off further. Being a DIY addict, I made it a mission to be my aficionado on divorce healing. In addition to writing, I read divorce articles…
