Disappointment and the Divorcee

I vaguely remember a critic once chastised Alanis Morrissette’s song “Ironic" for being not about various ironies, but instead about a series of “bummers”.  This makes me contemplate on whether life, like the song, is also just a series of disappointments?

Ever the optimist, I try not to see life that way.  Sometimes, though, I find myself in situations (or surrounded by them) that make it more and more difficult to find the “sunny side of the street”.  I call that difficulty “adding to my shit pile”. 

Over the past year, I have definitely added to my shit pile in ways I’d never thought possible.  One of the few comforts is that I find that I am not alone (Yay for group disappointment!  Lol.).  So many of my friends are going through similar situations that, as a result, I’ve adopted a very “It is what it is” mentality.  Sometimes it is so impossible to control the events in one’s life that one has to learn to succumb to them, to go with the flow…and perhaps to even accept that things are happening for a reason (even if we can’t yet determine what those reasons are). 

I’ve recently come to the conclusion that the most devastating disappointments are the ones that are typically emotional in nature.  Sure, there are the “daily” ones (not getting a job/promotion one deserves, getting poor service/food at a favorite restaurant, discovering that one’s favorite jeans are too tight…), but the ones we feel the most, well, disappointed by are the ones that grab us by the heart and squeeze without mercy.

Here are just a few of my “favorite” emotional disappointments.  While I cannot take credit for living through all of these, they are appropriate nonetheless: 

• Putting oneself out there and never getting the “morning after” call/email/text.
• Discovering an intriguing connection fraught with possibility only to have that person move away.
• Meeting someone only to find out that he’s a fraud…or worse, a chickenshit.
• Engaging in a night of (casual) passion with an amazing guy and getting a “souvenir” for the effort.
• Realizing that upon committing to someone, he has a small…heart.  Or mind.
• Marrying the seemingly perfect man and discovering he has another life (i.e. a girlfriend).
• Deciding to get a divorce.

And so we finally come to the entire point of this blog entry…

By and large, the most extreme disappointment I have felt this year comes with the decision to get a divorce.  Not only because my 11 year marriage is ending, but because I cannot wait for it to be over.  

How did I get to this point?  How is it that someone whom I have known for over half of my life could suddenly become a stranger to me?  How could I have loved him so much (I thought) when now all I want to do is punch him in the throat?  Lies have been told, perceptions have been warped, betrayals have been discovered…there is no fixing this one, folks.  No amount of therapy or wishing can change that.

And yet, it is what it is.  

While not completely blameless in the dissolution of my marriage, there were clearly forces at work that were beyond my control.  Blindsided, tossed aside, powerless to change the past, unsure how to change the future…there were so many days I wanted to withdraw, to stay in bed all day, to shut down…anything to avoid the tirade of suck that my life had seemingly become.

But I am not that person.  I am a survivor, a doer, the one who keeps her head when all rest of the world is losing theirs.  Damn it.

So I pulled myself out of bed everyday, forcing myself to keep moving, keep focusing, keep working to just hold my shit together.  I have tried to keep my personal life protected from all but the select few, choosing not to blast it all over the internet, community, local television stations.... 

That is not to say life has been perfect.  Of course there have been cracks in the veneer through which my stress became increasingly apparent:  Missed deadlines, lack of interest, mood swings, difficulty with impulse control…yup, classic cases of depression and anxiety.

And yet, surprisingly, I am finding that people still like me.  Heck, maybe they even like me better.  Lol.  I have learned who my friends are…and truthfully, were it not for them (and oh, OK, the occasional night filled with copious amounts of alcohol), I could never have gotten this far so quickly.  I certainly don’t think I could have even written about this phase of my life without dissolving into a quivering mass on the floor, wailing and sobbing like a crazy person.  Thank you, my friends, for helping to renew my faith in love, life and myself.

So what now?  Well, I guess just to continue to get back to the person I’ve always been, to experience life fully and to teach my daughter to do the same, to heal, to hope, to laugh…to date…

Oh, god, now that sounds like another adventure about which to be blogged. 

So until next time…

Thanks for reading!