On divorce

It seems strange to be writing about divorce so long after the event. Well, long enough to have forgotten when it happened, although I think there is stuff I’ve buried, rather than simply forgotten. And of course the wheels of life and all that churns around with them don’t stop turning just because you’re single, giving you immediate presence of mind and clarity of thought. Quite the contrary. And I’m dealing with menopause brain fog to boot. 

Anyway. I’ve looked it up. Absolute decision to end my marriage: October 2015; departure from our home with the kids: May 2016. Return to our home:  May 2017. Actual divorce, some months after that? I can’t remember and I honestly don’t care. I know that I went down to court to collect a flimsy white print-out of my Decree Absolute and thought, ‘you should be presenting this to me on parchment paper after the pain, tears and expense I’ve been through’. I looked around, half expecting a trumpet fanfare from somewhere above me in that high ceilinged place.

Six years ago, that process started. I read somewhere that it takes five to get over the breakdown of a significant relationship. I suppose that’s some kind of average based on roughly how much of a dick people tend to be/become. Hmmm. 

I am taking some time off from work. I am describing this as an ‘unfolding’. From the chair-shape my body has acquired due to long, hunched-up hours spent nestled at a folding table  in the bay window space of my living room. From the cellular compression I feel as a result of juggling a very intense job, home schooling and home life. From the extra layers of poundage my body has acquired due to 24/7 proximity to the kitchen, the removal of my daily commute, and the movement of food to near the top of my list of (available) pleasures. I can feel the poundage squishing around me and I hate it. 

It is also recovery time. To recover from the shock of Covid, I suppose - and the realisation that came with it that even a furloughed ex is one who is not going to do anything constructive with the kids, not even taking them out of the house in glorious sunshine, despite the fact that work had me pinned to my desk, helping support a Covid comms cell, a large team and a new out of hours rota. 

This period morphed into nine months of me acting up into a ‘head of’ job, that I already recognise will prove to be ‘one of the best jobs I ever had’, despite being on call 24/7, but would have been a lot more fun if I’d had a significant other to talk to about it now and then, crack a joke, support me when I was having crises of confidence, or chuck ideas around with. Or just make me a cup of tea once in a while or help me throw something together for the kids’ tea. Most senior managers at work are men who I suspect do not have to do everything at home as well as at work. It’s not impossible and I’m not moaning. I’m just sharing that it’s tough; that things are better shared; that I had to stop and rest before I broke. 

This time is also, it has only latterly occurred to me, an opportunity to recover from the battering that was my divorce. I kind of thought I had. Recovered from it, that is. From those horrendous 18 months of trying to separate myself from my ex, while he hung on for dear life, doing everything he could to stop me. From the fraught years of constant adjustment that have followed. 

I have wondered if the process numbed me somewhat. That in trying to detach from him, and detach from/‘normalise’ his behaviour in order to protect the kids, I somehow detached myself from reality. Became less able to feel, to cry. To remember. Life feels a little bit experienced from the perspective of looking through Perspex since all that happened. I remember the filter of the camera lens providing a similar (but welcome) distance when on work trips to developing countries. Degrees of separation from brutal reality. 

These days, the ex and I muddle along for the sake of the kids. And because we are still tenuously attached. What words describe feeling you would gladly never see someone again, yet knowing you would offer them the remaining seat on a life raft if your ship was going down? I feel muted, fuzzied, somehow lost, by the impact of his behaviour, yet also partly responsible. I feel terrible guilt at having ‘destroyed his life’ and ‘stolen his kids away from him’. Despite the problematic nature of those claims, I do feel that I supported him for years, let him lean on me in every possible way, and then removed myself from the picture - the metaphorical equivalent of pushing him off a cliff.

This week, work on my loft conversion starts. I fear for the battering this little house is going to go through, on the back of so much needless battering it received at the experimental hands of my ex. I remember the day he climbed up into the roof space  with a light for the first time, and sat in the ceiling hatch with his legs swinging through the gap. I remember his excitement at the size of the space and what we might do with it one day.

I gave myself this week and last to empty the roof. I’d made some headway with this over the summer. It has involved moving a lot of memories around. I wanted to clear the space and then perform some kind of healing, cleansing ceremony, ahead of the work starting.

Because I could. And because I realise I have stuff to let go of, too. That I want a new start for the house, but also for me. Not for the first time in my life, I realise there is stuff I no longer need to take responsibility for. Weight I bear that I do not have to. Behaviours that I assumed in childhood. Trying to make things better for people when, possibly, I had little or no impact and sometimes, no doubt, made things worse. 

So, in the final stages of pre-build clearing, I decided it is time to let go of my divorce process papers. Reams and reams of notes, court orders, second and third copies of form Es and finance papers. A copy of an early statement from my ex floated to the top of the pile. I read it. And saw there, in writing, untruths. Borne of desperation, delusion, mental distress and ignorance maybe, but untruths none the less. Untruths he screamed at me again, recently, on an awful ‘history repeats itself’ trip to B&Q. All this, went into the bin.  

My pheonix has been preening her beak on the collar of my ‘round the house’ body warmer. I can feel her thoughts. She knows that I found this house. That it was bought without my ex having set foot inside it because he trusted me to find somewhere in Bristol that we could move to. She knows how much I put up with and how much needless DIY I tried to stop happening. She knows that I couldn’t survive any longer in my marriage and that I tried to end it fairly. She knows that I had the right to demand change for myself. The right to Move On. My ex’s life and mine will continue to be intrinsically linked in some ways but I can only, truly, be responsible for myself and my actions. I don’t have to feel guilty any more. I am imperfect, but what matters now is the future. 

I found my chimes, and walked around the house, clearing the air, bottom to top. Then I went up to the roof, and lit a bunch of white sage that (smelt awful) I would waft around the house. Before I did, I burnt my marriage certificate. Watched the pieces fall onto the rafters. Left them there.