Changes

"Any transition serious enough to alter your definition

of self will require not just small adjustments in

your way of living and thinking but a full-on 

metamorphosis"

--Martha Beck

 

I had an amazing moment of utter clarity and revelation today while chatting on the phone with my friend Sam and listening to her talk about the bad breakup she experienced last year and how much her life has changed in the meantime. Her life, by the way, has changed drastically for the better--despite the dark period she had to go through to get to the light she basks in now.

I know I've been writing a lot about changes and transitions lately, but I don't think I actually absorbed the enormity of the changes and transitions coming my way. I don't think I actually comprehended on any real emotional level that the changes occurring in my life right now are changes that will ultimately alter my life and my sense of self.  I am in a stage of complete metamorphosis.

I am getting a divorce.

Whew.  There! I said it.  Out loud.  On a blog where I tend to get far more personal than many people think I should.  

Wow.  That was cathartic.  Writing that one sentence--I AM GETTING A DIVORCE--was seriously cathartic.  

It's happening.  It's a big CHANGE.  But it's happening.  Because it needs to happen.  

I struggled with writing this blog.  I struggled with the idea of writing about divorce on a blog.  It's personal.  Very personal. Maybe it's too personal.  And it sucks.  But it's honest and this blog has from its very inception been both personal and honest. 

I decided to write this blog entry for myself.  This one isn't really for you, dear readers.  It's for me.  It'll probably be too long by most professional blogging standards.  It'll probably be too personal and too uncomfortable and too everything for some people.

Some of you will judge me for it.  That's okay.

This one is for me--not you.  

I'm not sure if my husband has told his family about our impending divorce.  I'm not sure if he's accepted it.  I'm not sure if he's living in denial.  I'm not sure where he is in this process.....

Sometimes I'm not sure where I am either.  But I think that's okay.  

I've been holding my breath--living in a suspended state of being.  I've been treading water somewhere between absolute denial and total acceptance, but now I think I'm ready to move more purposely towards the acceptance side of this ordeal.  

I have not lived at home in a while.  My things are still there.  I still call it home.  But it is not home.  I will be moving all of my things to a new apartment soon.  I am sure I will sob until I vomit the day I do it.  I have no doubt it will be a heartbreaking experience to leave my home--to start a new home somewhere else.

But I think I'm getting closer to being truly peaceful with this.  I know I'm not going to be at peace immediately.  It isn't going to happen overnight.  However, I'm finally in a place where I can see how I can eventually be at peace with a new existence.

And that's what this is--a new existence, a new beginning, and in many ways....a new me.  

I'm scared.  I cry.  A LOT.  A lot for me anyway---I've never been much of a crier, but lately I've cried a lot by my own standards.  I feel alternately wishy-washy, ambivalent, angry, sad, excited, confused, certain, unbalanced, right, wrong, peaceful, unsettled, and just about everything in between.   I now fully comprehend the phrase 'emotional roller coaster' because I am on one. 

I've been telling everyone that I am okay, and in many ways I really am okay.  But the truth is--in many ways I am not okay.  In many ways I am not 'fine'.  I've finally realized that I don't have to be okay all the time.  I don't have to be fine all day long.  I am allowed to feel whatever I feel and I should just let myself feel the way I feel without guilt--even if what I feel is 'not okay.'  Feeling 'not okay' doesn't mean that I'm not okay with the divorce.  I am.  I know getting divorced is what's best.  It really is and I am okay with that.  But that doesn't mean that I have to be emotionally 'okay' all the time.  

That was a freeing revelation.  Thank you Sam.  You helped me realize that it's okay to not be okay and I needed that.