One Week

It was peaceful and blissful and amazing and wonderful.  For a week.  One week.

And then the ugly of the divorce started.  Because he snooped and found something small and decided to make it big.

Supposedly coming to take the kids to Church on a Sunday morning, he showed up 30 minutes early and set to work scouring my cell phone for something. Anything that would explain why I would not want to be with him.  Why I would choose my own self respect and sanity over his harsh tones and expectations only God could reach?

Even He would probably do it wrong.

In his search, which I was unaware of, he found a message to a man.  In truth, a man that was only a friend.  It said, "I'll meet you there!"

I was going to lunch with him on the first day without the kids in seven days.  Not to flirt, not to have sex.  But to talk.  Innocently.  One separated woman to one divorced man.

A crime, I suppose, in the husband's eyes as the yelling started, startling me and my kids as it boomed from the kitchen, across the house and reverberated through the bathroom.

"I KNEW you were cheating!  You filthy whore!  You have always been a slut and a whore!  I KNEW it!!  You have a lover you've probably been doing for a year!"

I stood, my child's hair in my hand, prepping for her ponytail, staring at her father wondering what I ever saw in him.

The ranting continued and I let it.  What else was I to do?  Yes, there was a text message from a man.  Yes, I was going to meet him for lunch.  Yes, it probably took him by surprise.

But as the name calling and rant continued, my guilt was absolved by the fact that he was losing total control over a text message.

The man who stood out in the yard the year before after our daughter's birthday party and proclaimed that I just 'happened to be hanging around' when he wanted kids but his heart belonged to another. A woman who was the love of his life. A woman who was at our wedding and we at hers.  A woman who had been the thorn in my halo of hope from day one.

And yet here he stood.  Proclaiming that I was an adulteress.  The reason that I lost touch with the marriage and lost interest in him.  Because I pined for another man.  A man who did not exist, except in a text message.

As the rant continued and he shattered my phone - supposedly erasing my created adultery - threatened me and my kids and then had to explain to the police why he lost his cool, my resolve and my decision became even more justified.

I was so glad to be rid of someone who did not love me.  But I was more thrilled to be ending a bad relationship with someone who did not love themselves.

One week.  And then all Hell broke loose.

Am I Really Single?

This is day 1.  The day that he moved out.  The day I kicked him out.  The day that, after months and months of begging and pleading, he actually listened, packed a suitcase and left.  It is liberating, scary, frustrating, exciting and what I wanted.

Isn't it?

As I walk around the house I see my three kids playing nicely having recovered from the dramatic exit he chose to have for all to see.

I'd hugged them, let them cry and held them best I could as he threw things into a suitcase, oblivious to his audience, in typical bully style.  He'd told them "I will never be back!" and "Mommy is making me leave, be mad at her!"

I held my tongue, confident I could reinstill trust and faith in my young children, hopefully reversing his words, actions and insensitive behavior.  Behaviors I so badly wanted to get away from after 9 years of living with them day after day.

It all started to go wrong before the wedding.  Before I donned the white dress that I was thrilled to find on clearance.  Before the stick turned blue 5 days before the wedding.  Before the children arrived, one a year, three years in a row.  Before I quite my lucrative career to raise them.  Before we blew through my savings and through his earnings trying to make our material possessions give us what the marriage was not.

Before I let the screaming voices in my head seep through the hope and romantic notions that I struggled to hang onto year after year.  I held onto them alone... thus lived alone, despite his arrival home every night.

So here I stand, children settled and coloring, faces having recovered from the red, blotchy mess that decorated their young cheeks just minutes before, wondering what to do next.

Struggling to believe that 3 months before my 40th birthday I am actually struggling to answer the question... Am I Really Single?