The day after my ex-Husband moved out, I was a wreck. We had divorced five months prior, but that experience was more like a quick-serve with a judge as the drive-thru attendant.
It is kind of strange to admit that finalizing the divorce was pretty anti-climactic. I guess pop culture has given us “divorce” as the big dramatic scenario of standing in Court, facing our doubts and fears and insecurities, and “sealing the deal” with tears and remorse.
It was anything but, in fact it was over and then we were in the elevator at the Courthouse blinking at each other in surprise. We were divorced. Unsure of whether to celebrate or cry, we went out to lunch then went home and continued in the same pattern of living we had set up back in February when we first decided to end our marriage: same house, same cats, dinner together, separate bedrooms. It was very normal.
Because of that, I was unprepared six months later to turn around after he drove his truck away and walk back into my home and completely fall apart.
I’m rather used to going into emotional shock, sorry to say. I don’t handle it well, at least I don’t think so, and when I walked through the door into the living room I just kept going, back to my bedroom: the safe place I had lived in since we decided to get divorced.
In my book Grieving Futures (it’s free!) I talk about hiding under my father’s desk as one of the few safe places I had in life. Even after he died, when I was 26 years old, I would curl up in the chair well of Poppa’s desk (it was a big desk) and just sit there for hours. Sometimes the dogs would join me.
My bedroom became my safe place, where I lived and ate and slept and wrote and goofed off. It was my way of retreating and creating a place I owned for myself. As familiar and comfortable as it was, I still found it difficult to continue living with ex-Husband, even if we were divorced and had separate bedrooms, because I was ready to get a move on and his presence was stifling – less on account of anything in particular he did than I was mentally in another place by then. The rent he paid helped because I got laid off the same month I got divorced, and I will never begrudge that.
Yet, the dichotomy of being ready to move on while trapped in a situation that was unchanging for a long time wore me down. My room was where I stuffed so much of myself – my writing, my art, my studies, my hobbies, my entertainment, my sleep…everything. It was that “safe place under the desk.” Ex-Husband and I got along okay as roomies, but for me it was a reminder of my stagnation so I withdrew into my shell and hid out until change finally came.
On September 12, 2010, ex-Husband drove off with his things (but not his cat) and then I was alone, exactly what I had longed for. I went into my room, put on my headphones, and spent the next twelve hours listening to music and reading fanfic. It was my safe place.
Of course the irony is, once you are in a safe place, you can finally relax and…fall apart. Sometimes, that has to happen first, even if it feels like it is what is happening “at last.”
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