Splitsville sucks!

Short and sweet sports fans, am getting divorced! Filed for divorce after 17 years of marriage in early december and moved out of my own house on 10dec08. Have been living out of bags and boxes since then. This has to be the single most difficult experience I have ever endured in my life. I wouldn't wish this upon my worst enemy. The worst is not being under the same roof with my three daughters.
My whole life has been turned inside out and upside down and my emotions are a storm of I don't know what. I feel sadness, shame, some peace and quiet, some what liberated, distraught, positive, negative. In fact, I really am unable to pinpoint any one feeling since then. My feelings are all relative to a lot of other stuff, people, etc, etc.
My parents are divorced, have been since I was 4, my brother is divorced. Some of our cousins are divorced. I should not be a stranger to it, but one has to go through it to understand it. Many of my coworkers and friends are divorced, so what the fuck? I don't know.
It's not so much the material aspect so much as the human aspect. Firstly, there's my daughters. They are with ther mother and I keep in touch with them via email and cell phone, they're only a short 15 minute drive away. The girls are 16, 15, and 8 about to be 9 years old next month. The teens have their friends and social circles and their own young agendas. My youngest is who I am most concerned for. She's only 8. Thank God children are more reseliant than adults. When I do see her she comes running straight into my arms and tells me she loves daddy. It hurts to let her go.
My routine is all upset except for work. I still go to work and it's almost as if there is some sense of normalcy there. My job is the one thing not really turned inside out. Seems like everything else in my life is. Are all divorces like this? Are there stages like Kubler-Ross and death and dying? I suppose so.
Some of me feels freed, though I'm not really. Some of me feels liberated, but the divorce decree isn't finalized as of this writing. I feel some loss, but mostly I feel let's get it over with so I can get on with the rest of my life.
I suppose I feel hopeful in the sense that I want to hurry up, get the divorce finalized and get on with living. Get on with the recovery is more like it. I liken it to amputating a gangrenous limb. Suffering, getting help, going through the surgery, going through OT/PT, getting on with the healing. So when does the healing start?
The healing starts right here and now. whenever I decide to get my life together. It starts when I decide to heal. It's like Victor Frankel says, "It's not what happens to you in life, but how you deal with it". That's the best way I can put it right now.
Sure my life is topsy turvy, I'm the one who topsy turvied it. Now I and I alone and God must unfuck it. It was my decision to get divorced and now it's my decision to start the recovery process. I started smoking cigarettes again and quit after almost two months, I started working out again, that's a good thing. Started going back to Mass, that's a great thing. One must look on the bright side of life like Monty Python's "Always look on the bright side of life." in Life of Brian. Have not started drinking to excess, I'm saving that for the post-divorce celebration. More to follow on that later, I go to court next week for the orders.


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