I spent my last night as a married woman on July 12, 2009. I don’t remember sleeping much. Just laying there, uncomprehending, of the new life I would embark upon in a few short hours.
I got divorced, after nearly 20 year of marriage, July 13, 2009. I left the courthouse, loaded my car, and drove to Utah to begin my new and unexpected life as a single mother of four children, their sole source of all support.
I arrived in Utah approximately 10 p.m. that night, and moved in to my niece’s bedroom in my brother’s basement. I unloaded my car, put my children to bed, and cried as I watched them sleep, knowing that was my last night to simply be their mother. From there on out, I would be working full-time. I sat there and mourned all of the moments, ordinary as they are, day to day, that I would miss.
I cried myself to sleep. (That was pretty much what I’d done every night since March 18, 2009.) Well, at least I tried to sleep. But I hadn’t been sleeping much, or well, for four months.
I returned to the workforce, working in an office full-time for the first time since 1991, on July 14, 2009. At the end of that day all I could write was, “I am so glad this day is over.”
That day I worked my first day in an office of 50 strangers. It was hard. Hard to get up and go to work, hard to drive the highway and commute to work when I’d only driven that highway on vacations the two previous decades, hard to try to be friendly, hard to meet new people, and hard to learn a new job when my heart was shattered.
It was hard to work straight through lunch so I could go home to my children a little earlier. It was hard to sit at my desk feeling old, ugly, like a loser and a like a total dinosaur. It was SO hard to be me that day.
By mid-day it was so hard I feared I’d have a breakdown at my desk in front of everyone, so I went into the bathroom, shut myself in a stall, and cried. I tried to tell myself that I could have it worse (although imagine as I might, nothing really came to mind as to what could possibly be worse!) and I tried to count my blessings, but that day sure was difficult.
I returned to my brother’s home that evening to find my kids had a busy, fun day without me. I was so grateful for that, yet I was sad that having busy, fun days with my children all day every day were a thing of the past. I was starved, but I changed clothes, borrowed a neighbor’s truck, and moved a load of my stuff. I served the kids dinner, cleaned the kitchen, and watched my brother and his wife go out to dinner with a client.
Talk about feeling left behind! It used to be me that dressed up and went to dinner at nice restaurants with my spouse. I honestly felt like I’d never do anything like that again in my life. I felt the door on so many things had slammed shut, never to open again.
That day I was filled with grief. I was sick, tired and listless inside. My heart was dead. I couldn’t believe I was not quite 42 years old and already done for. But I tried to hold my head up anyway, and tried to smile and carry on, even though that wasn’t what I felt like on the inside. I was absolutely SICK at what my life had become.
I don’t know if I cried all the way to work that terrible, first day, but I know that I cried all the way home.
Thankfully, that was the worst of it. Every day, for the most part, has been better since that first day. Now that I’ve gotten to know my co-workers, now that they are my friends and know my story, several have commented they had no idea what I was going through or how I felt when they first met me. They said they never would have guessed. That’s good. I’m a child of the 70s and 80s and grew up listening to a Melissa Manchester song that emphasized, “Don’t cry out loud. Just keep it inside. Learn how to hide your feelings.”
I think I got the message of that one. Except for those visits to a stall in the bathroom at work. My first day as a single woman.
The terrible first day, of the rest of my life.
The good news? I knew it could only go up from there. And thankfully, it has!
One of the many things I learned last year was that if you hold on long enough, if you just keep getting out of bed every day and putting one foot in front of the other, eventually it will get better. Much better. And maybe even quicker than you expect.
Stay tuned.
