Musings of a Divorcee

In the 672 days since the incident, since I decided to divorce, I’ve combed over and scrutinized every moment of the time we spent together trying to figure out what was and wasn’t real. I’ve looked at all the pictures and the home videos; read through the love letters, cards, chats, and emails. All those memories, laughs, inside jokes. The faces of our two beautiful children. The full life we created. 

A forensic analysis of 15 years, nearly 5,500 days, over 131,000 hours, and countless minutes. A self-interrogation – all the nagging and gnawing questions. A relentless seeker of the truth.

But we were happy, right?

Could it ALL have been a lie, a show?

Was I the only one not in on it? 

No one can know how hard it is to revisit all that; dissecting, reviewing, and questioning what of it was real or wasn’t—spending time trying to figure out where, how, and why you betrayed me. It hurts but even more than your actions, how I betrayed myself. 

I made concessions over the years – from the very beginning. In the moments, none seemed that serious, that consequential. But the culmulation of all those small concessions: disappointments, dissatisfactions, settling loneliness. I made choices about what I could and couldn’t live with. Thought that our “partnership” was a successful one, if I knew what it was and wasn’t. 

How do I grapple with what I thought I knew and didn’t know all at once? That my gut told me that something wasn’t quite right at various moments. That I was guilty of ignoring that instinct. That I didn’t need you to disparage me; that I was beating you to the punch by calling my own sanity and knowing into question.

That I was in some ways complicit in my own betrayal. 

And that, to this day, that hurt, that betrayal, that mistrust of myself feels insurmountable.