Musings from the Trenches: Feeling, Dealing and Healing from the Pain of Divorce

Today, I was lucky enough to accompany my daughter and granddaughter to music class. I watched my little Lyla marching around that room to the beat of her own drummer. She didn't follow directions. She didn't sit when she was supposed to, walk in the direction we were all walking, sing when she was supposed to, play her instrument the way other kids were playing theirs, do the response to the call and she just generally did what SHE wanted to do. My daughter was wishing she would do as the other kids were doing. I was beaming! Lyla knows her own mind. Already at 15 months, she isn't afraid to be different. She is a leader and she's vocal about it! She's persistent and difficult to cajole when she doesn't want to do something. I love it! (I don't have to discipline her!) She is her own person to the nth degree!! Later in the day, I went along to her 15 month doctor appointment. This was an appointment with those dreaded shots - 3 of them. (They now get ...

It's funny, ever since I've been back from Hilton Head and more specifically the powerful, yet peaceful ocean, I have had writer's block. I'm sure it's because I am back home where there is constant noise: work, television, music, legal things, emails, worry, even people! All this noise is clouding my mind. It's clouding my spirit and the sense of peace I felt just a week ago. I haven't been able to concentrate on anything important, let alone the mundane. My suitcases are still sitting on the floor at the foot of my bed, waiting to be unpacked. The dishwasher needs to be unloaded and all my flower pots outside are literally starving for attention. I have some bills to pay, laundry to do, groceries to shop for - all the stuff of life. And it seems too overwhelming. My daughters want to know what happened to their mom, the one who was always busy thinking and doing for other people. They say they no longer know who their dad is and now their mom is d...

  I have always had one of those bleeding hearts. If a Hallmark or some animal rights commercial comes on tv, I'm in tears before it's over. In just about every movie I've ever seen, I am in tears at least once before the end. I can watch that movie 10 times and cry in the same spot every time. My kids will look at each other and say "she's crying again." If somebody is crying in my presence, I cry. I can look at someone and see their sadness and cry. I read an article or see a news report about unrest and human indignities and cry. I am moved by a sermon in church and I cry. I cannot play Beethoven's "Adieu to the Piano" all the way through without tears running down my cheeks. So you won't be surprised when I tell you I have had an inexhaustible supply of tears over the past almost-5 months. I am truly amazed and actually a little bit in awe of the sheer number of tears I've cried since May 2nd. I think if there was a way to add up...

Well, I'm home. It's funny, now that I'm back from my sojourn, I feel some of the peace melting away. Like maybe I left some of it in Hilton Head, at the ocean. Going home from anywhere now just seems weird. My car and my heart still want to drive the way I did for 17 years, back to my Kingswood home - the place that was really home, the place where my daughters grew up, the place where we made that house a home for four, the place where we invested love, money and time. We had much laughter and many tears in that home. It saw lots of life. But then, it stopped being a home. When it was just me there, it became a place where I didn't want to be, an empty place, a sad place. My new home doesn't feel like home. I've made it cute and charming and cozy and it's a nice new place but it's still not home. I approach my garage and I almost dread pushing the opener. The first thing I see is that half the garage is piled high with furniture and tubs and...

Seaglass is that pretty little treasure you find sometimes when you're walking on a beach. The waves bring it to shore along with a million shells and pieces of shells. You have to be good at spotting it, sometimes like any treasure, it hides, waiting to be discovered. I think seaglass starts out as ordinary shards of glass that could cut the strongest skin. Someone, somewhere throws it in the ocean like the very worst sort of polluter. But the ocean and her waves have a treat in store for that glass. Buffered and pummeled over time -sometimes 30-100 years -  by the mighty power of the ocean, the glass becomes frosty and the sharp edges become soft and smooth. Green and brown seaglass are the most common, with blue and red rarer to find. I love to collect seaglass whenever I am at the beach. And this trip, there was no seaglass to be found. Instead, I found the above, a piece of wood that is shaped like a divining rod (with an odd, stubby piece sticking up from o...

Lately, I catch myself studying couples. Wherever I go, I am noticing couples. I have had friends in the past tell me that when they wanted to get pregnant and couldn't, all they saw were pregnant women. When I see couples walking hand-in-hand or arm-in-arm (in my opinion, that arm-in-arm thing doesn't work unless you are both exactly the same height with the same stride. It's like sharing an umbrella and expecting both of you to stay dry...doesn't work) I find myself bitterly thinking: "Ya, this was us five months ago. We were you. We were walking hand-in-hand. We were talking and sometimes walking in companionable silence." And even, "I hate your couplehood." I wonder if you're really as happy as you put on. I wonder if just lurking beneath the surface, a sentence or two will end your marriage like it did mine. I wonder if you will see it coming? I wonder if your seeming companionship is just an illusion, that perhaps one of you isn't...

So many lessons to be learned from the ocean. The waves crash unreservedly; unrestrained. Wild and unabashedly they roar. Divorce is like that. It is wild, it is crazy. I want to roar like an angry wave crashing over itself into the sea below. I want to cry out at the injustice of being left behind. I was deceived and blindsided. I've been abandoned and alienated from the one person I trusted to be by my side forever - until death separated us. I didn't sign up for this. I didn't pledge my soul to another, to become one, only to be ripped apart from stem to stern. One half of me is missing, violently torn away. The agony is felt along every torn part. My heart is crushed and I hurt so badly. I never knew a person could be in so much pain and not be dying. Sometimes I wonder why, when people see me, they don't see the anguish I feel. How does that not show on my face, in the way I walk, in my eyes? How does that not come screaming forth when I'm screaming o...