Where Broken Begins, Liberation Follows

When my ex-husband abandoned our family, I thought I was broken. It wasn't until I stood in front of the judge with tears in my eyes, happily responding with "yes," to her questions of whether or not I was in agreement with the dissolving of our marriage, that I realized I was finally free. Free of mental, physical, and emotional torment. Free of all the inadequacies I felt whenever I was around his family who hated that I was intelligent, beautiful, complex, and sure of myself. Free of the feelings of being judged for wanting better and more than what we were just surviving off of. Free of feeling guilty for blindly following a man who had no clue of where he was going; who had no plans for the next 3-5 years of his own life. Free of the guilt of demanding more while he followed a dream and I paid bills, because I was supposed to be his peace, not his problem. Free of being convinced that I was a burden because I craved communication, honesty, and a man who saw me and believed in my potential just as much as I believed in his. Free of a lonely, horrific, miserable, and depressing marriage. I was finally free. Were the months/years easy following my divorce? Hell no!

The months and even years following my divorce weren’t easy. I didn’t wake up the next day magically healed. I woke up with a puffy face from crying myself to sleep. I woke up to an eight, and three-year-old still needing me to be a mother, and confused about why daddy wasn't home. I woke up with unimaginable anxiety, loneliness and fear about how I’d raise my kids alone. My thoughts were consumed with how I’d pay my bills, whether him leaving was my fault because I was never satisfied with mediocrity and whether I’d ever trust anyone again with love, especially myself. Some days, I questioned if freedom was even worth the silence that followed. The walls felt like they were caving in every time my feet hit the floor in the mornings. There were nights I cried myself to sleep and would beg for him to come back. There were nights when I missed only the idea of love because the man it was attached to had tainted its meaning. There were days when shame crept in convincing me that I had failed. That I failed myself, my marriage, and more importantly my children because I dismantled their family dynamic of a two-parent household. Despite all of this, every morning I woke up, I faced the world anyway. I was beginning to build something within myself, quietly and slowly. And after all that time of dwelling in the sadness, anger and bitterness, something shifted.

I began to hear my own voice again. My old voice. The one that dreamed of success and loved genuinely and deeply. Not the voice that was conditioned to minimize my capabilities in order to stroke the ego of an insecure man. Not the voice that people pleased, and stayed silent in moments of uncomfortability. I started making decisions for myself that would lay the foundation for the life I knew I deserved. I enrolled in classes, so I could finish my Bachelors degree. "No" became a complete sentence for me. I took myself on dates and began to buy myself flowers. I poured myself and all of the love I had in me into my children, putting them in sports, attending all of their events, having movie nights, staying in hotels for vacations, and teaching them about what real, unconditional love is. I started to show up for me.

While rediscovering who I was without him, I realized I had never really been seen. But that's also because I didn't fully see myself either. Now I understand that I'm someone who does deserve the world, considering how much of it was weighing on my shoulders. Looking back, I don't regret the journey. Not the tears, not the sleepless nights, not even the moments of doubt. Because from the ashes of what broke me, I built boundaries, and reconstructed what self love looks like for me. I built self-respect. I built a version of myself that no longer begs for love or tolerates basic effort and narcissism. I began to understand that freedom without peace is a form of bondage and having standards does not equate to being a burden. I should not have to constantly set myself on fire to keep a broken, insecure, and selfish man who's a dreamer with no goals, warm. I chose myself, even when it was the most terrifying thing to do, because it was the most realistic act of self-love I could have ever made. So no, it wasn’t easy. But damn, it was worth it.

If you’re a woman standing in the thick of it, wondering if you should sign those papers, heart conflicted, and wondering if you are about to make the worst or best decision of your life, let me tell you this:

You’re not crazy. You’re not selfish. You’re not too much. You’re just finally choosing peace over pretense, truth over tolerance, and growth over stagnation. While the journey ahead might look like an unpaved road with no clear destination, accompanied with crying in the grocery store aisle over the juice you'd always buy him, or becoming frustrated with asking Google how to change your flat tire, stop and tell yourself, it's okay. Give yourself some grace, young lady. You’ll probably eat dinner standing at the stove a few too many nights, telling yourself you’ll “do better tomorrow.” And that’s okay. Healing isn’t always graceful. A lot of the time, it's just surviving the day without texting, calling or checking your ex's social media pages.

One day, you'll wake up and realize the silence is no longer loud or unbearable. It's peaceful.The house doesn’t feel empty, it feels like yours. And the version of you that you thought was broken, is the same woman who’s now building a life so bold and unapologetically hers will make the old version of you proud. Keep going. It's okay to cry when you need to. It's healthy. But laugh more, knowing that your laughter is your best form of medicine. Never allow anyone, especially him to convince you that choosing yourself was selfish or inconsiderate.

Sometimes, your "happily ever after," starts the moment you sign those divorce papers and whisper to yourself, "I'm finally free." I didn't lose my husband. I released a weight I was no longer willing to carry, and gained a level of peace, that nobody's noise could ever disturb again.