sooner

A woman I have known through work for over a decade asked me the other day how I was

For some reason I decided to be a little glass half empty for a change

I said ” I am very overwhelmed these days. Everything is good but I am extremely overwhelmed”

She said “if you could do it all over again would you do it differently?”

I knew she was talking about my separation and divorce.

And the pressure on me and me alone now

I said without blinking

“Yes, I would have done it sooner”

Then she said something others have said to me before ” How come all the separated and divorced people always seem happier than everyone else?”

Ok, first of all NO

and second of all NO

We may seem happier only because of what we climbed out of. Life was really awful before it got better. We are all we’ve got and we alone are making our lives. Truth be told , we can’t afford anymore negativity.

My never -before -felt -level -of -happiness is part what I have been through, part what I have found in myself, part my respect for the shortness of life and to an enormous extent my feeling that I am  outrageously lucky. And  my somewhat recent understanding of the power  that how we are makes us who we are.

But I wish to death that I did not need to walk over hot coals to arrive at this.

We have been through something so difficult and heartbreaking and we have found out what we are made of and what we can do.

Do we feel sad and lonely at times?Do we wish we had one  wonderful and long marriage and all the amazing and solid things that come from that? Does our heart break in half in quiet moments at the smallest things that remind us we are alone?

YES

but ‘sooner’ is still my answer.

I asked my art classes to write down what they wanted to be when they grow up expecting- adjectives like famous, or proper nouns like doctor or astronaut or firefighter but what I got was something unexpected and perfectly BANG ON. Click here for what 7 year old Heather wants to be

2 thoughts on “sooner

  1. I hear you Nancy. As my girlfriend says, ” I carry it all quietly in my little backpack. No one understands.”
    If I could do it all again, I would have known what a narcissist was. You can’t live with one even if you are the most family oriented in the word. Sometime there just isn’t a choice and the it is the saddest thing of all. Especially when people don’t understand that this I something you would have died to make work for your children and self .

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