So many moments in life come with a distinct before and after.
For example: before I had my first child (or any subsequent children), after she was born.
You just know that from that moment forward, nothing will ever be like it was in the before.
At the moment I am navigating life after seperation – before divorce, but no longer living the way I was. I can feel it in my bones that I will never experience life again like it was before, and I don’t miss it usually, that before. A single thirtysomething who has the ability to choose a life she wouldn’t have considered in the before. A single thirtysomething who sometimes wonders if that is a good thing. A single thirtysomething who looks at the freedom of time now and wonders, what would it be like to love and be loved again?
Truthfully I don’t think I know what that would be like anymore. The love I had did not sustain me in the before. I longed for someone to love me the way I loved him. Now i never want to love someone like that again, so completely that losing that life has been akin to learning to live without a piece of myself. The biggest piece because when you love someone in a way that you begin to live for them you don’t really know who you are. I am now a single thirtysomething who has asked the question “what do I enjoy?”
To learn to love me in this after has been an arduous process. I have gone back to who i was in the before I was with him, a before that was 13 years previous so has been hard to find and connect with. The rediscovery of book genres, of TV shows and movies, of sports that I enjoy, and not just because there is man I am trying to please and keep the peace with. that before was filled with the teen angst that keeps you hopeful. Revisiting that youthful longing has been a joy.
I am almost two years in, so close to feeling a new after, the after divorce. This is an after I long for, the legal closure of a marriage that ran its course. The ability to say with finality “my ex-husband” and for it to be true. No beating around the bush having to explain “well, techniclly I am married, but we aren’t actually together..”. To me the after of divorce looks like freedom. It comes with a cost that I am sure will be sadness for some time, but the overall feeling is that I will finally be free of him, and of many of the ties that have held us close together.
thirtysomething 