Let Go Or Be Dragged

A reader of Wigs and Things who has been following my sordid tale said something interesting to me the other day regarding my divorce:

''Let go or be dragged.''

I read that remark in the morning on my way to work. When I arrived I had a meeting, in which the facilitator had a tattoo on her arm which said, ''Let it go''.

After that I went to another meeting, and there was a poster on the wall which read, ''Yesterday was yesterday. Today is today. Let go.''

I think at the moment I am being dragged.

My body feels exhausted. I have trouble sleeping. I have no appetite. I have knots in my stomach.

My mind is weary and all over the place. Am I making a huge mistake?

I have resorted back to my ''I hate cancer'' mentality. It ruined my life. Really, it did.

I feel like I died on April 19, 2017. The day of my diagnosis. The person who I was died that day.

I had never hyperventalated before then. I kind of did when I found out my brother died. But that day, I cried so hard I couldn't breathe. I was shaking and hysterical and completely beside myself.

Sometimes, that's how I feel now. When I think about losing my husband, my home, my family under one happy roof. When I think about it all, I can't breathe. It feels like those losses all over again.

Alternatively, I also experienced a rebirth, on the day the cancer was excised from my body.
That was on August 30, 2017. I was born again.

Given a second chance at life. Given a new lens in which to see the world. To see my life, my relationships, my past, my present, my future. Everything looks different with my new lens.

Maybe I am currently experiencing a second rebirth. Maybe my divorce and new home and new job all symbolize that. Maybe it hurts so much because I am growing so much. Growing pains, perhaps?

The trouble is, I don't know who I am anymore. I want space. I want time to myself. I don't want to feel lost and hopeless and disappointed anymore. I am so wounded, so hurt. By cancer, by my husband. By losing my breasts. Everything. I am just so very wounded. I just want to heal, and feel whole again.

I think living in my own house will be a great healer. I think time away from my ex will be good.
Our divorce is supposed to go through next week. Next week. I thought I would feel a sense of calm, of acceptance. Clarity, even.  Instead all I feel is doubt. Uncertainty. Weariness.

Having it continue to linger isn't healthy for any of us.

Every time the mattress commercial comes on, my eight year old says, ''Look, Mom! They're having a sale! We should buy some for the new house!''. Or when we go over to a friend's house and they play fetch in their backyard with their dog they say, ''We should make sure the new house has a backyard like this so we can play with Poe.'' They are excited. They want to know when it's happening.

Do we stay together, and start again on a clean slate? Wipe away past wrongs, old hurts, bitter feelings, and resolve to turn over a new leaf of our marriage?

We are getting along well. Better than ever. And we still have chemistry.

He has offered to get a dog. Move to Oregon. Hold me every night like I have always wanted.

Why are we getting divorced again?

My instinct to love him and hold him and be with him hasn't diminished like I thought it would. Even though he hurt me, broke my heart, betrayed my trust totally. Still, I possess those feelings.

Nevertheless, feelings aren't enough sometimes. The good feelings don't make up for the bad ones.

I think I am feeling this way because the end is near. It is like when someone is dying, and you want to just hold them and love them and say goodbye to them. That's what is happening, our marriage is dying. It is in its final days.

I want to say goodbye to it in the most loving way possible. I feel like it deserves that. I feel like after 11 years of love and adventures and babies and houses, it deserves that. We deserve that.

I wish I wasn't saying goodbye to something so beautiful. I wish I just hated him and couldn't wait to get away from him. But I don't hate him. I don't like his behavior sometimes. I don't like how he thinks I control him, or it's all about my feelings, or that he deserves a huge more amount of equity than me because he renovated the house and I was just Little Miss Housewife while he was slaving away. I don't like how he neglected me when I had cancer and broke my wrist, or how he continued to talk to German after he knew it was absolutely killing me. But still...I don't hate him.

In fact, I love him deeply. And always will. And the thought of another woman living in my house one day tears me apart.

I told him I would never, ever, have another man live in our house if I kept it. If I ever got remarried and it was time to live with someone else, I would move into a new house with my new husband, where we could make new memories together and not have the ghost of my ex-husband there.

I only expected him to extend the same courtesy to me. I explained that if he ever had someone living in the house, in my house, in our house, I wouldn't be able to co-parent with him anymore, spend Christmases and birthdays and Fourth of July's. And I certainly wouldn't be able to go over to my old house and see another woman, no matter how nice she is, living there.

He said that is my way of controlling him. So he can keep the house, but never move on with his life?

He said I will feel differently. I will find someone better than him, and be very happy, and not give our house a second thought.

If we never get back together, he will be happy for me if I find someone else. His only request was no lawyers, car salesmen, or anyone with a lifted truck who doesn't actually use it. He wants me to be happy for him, too. If he finds someone else.

I said I would be, but not German. Not that Nazi Whore, German. Anyone but her. Evidently when he told her he really could not talk to her anymore, he might reconcile with his wife, she said to him, ''You won't be happy.''

If I was seeing a man who was divorcing but considering trying to make his marriage work and told me that, I would say, ''Well, that sucks for me. But you have a wife and children, and if you think maybe you can make it work, you should try. And if it doesn't work, give me a call sometime and maybe we can meet up or something.''

Who the fuck was she to say he wouldn't be happy? This woman he has known for a month. What does she know about our life together? Our happy years? She sounded evil to me. I don't want someone like that in my home, or around my children. Not now, not ever.

Maybe I am feeling this way because of the house. Thinking of some bitch like German in my house. I will always consider it my home. Where I conceived our son. Our baby took his first steps. The kids boarded the school bus for the first time. I simply don't want someone else having new memories with him in my house, no matter how nice and wonderful she may be. The anxiety alone of thinking about it saddens me more than I can express.

So, here I am. Confounded. Confused. Totally lost.

Is it supposed to hurt this much? Is it? That's not rhetorical, I really want to know.

Then I remember how much he has hurt me, especially with the whole German fiasco. He says he didn't sleep with her, and I believe him. He says he doesn't have family here, and few friends, and was scared about being alone. I understand all of that.

But what I cannot understand is how you could lie to someone you love, over and over again. Look them in the eyes and just blatantly lie. Continue the behavior they just told you is hurting them, killing them emotionally. After they've begged you to stop, after reminding you they are still recovering from the hardest year of their life after having cancer. And to still turn around and do it anyway, wow. That just isn't love to me.

We all unintentionally hurt each other sometimes. That is a part of being human. I get it. And when I have hurt someone I am so apologetic, so genuinely sorry. I think he is, too. The trouble is, he just kept on doing it anyway. When the person who is supposed to love you the most, protect you, and they intentionally hurt you instead, it is quite a betrayal. Divorce or no divorce, I would never have done that to him. Never.

So here I am, dinner cooking, him about to come home. We have been getting along well, watching a bit of Netflix in the evenings. He even took me out to dinner and drinks last weekend. All the while, he has applied for the loan to buy me out, the lawyer sent me the plethora of paperwork to sign, and as soon as next week a judge could sign off on it all and grant us the decree. I am getting more money, and he is paying some child support.  That means I can afford to buy a house in our kid's school district, and not worry as much about paying my bills. It will still be a stretch, but it will be manageable. We've settled on all of the details, it's all ready to go.
And yet I am living each day as normal, like my world isn't spinning upside down. This might be my last Thursday as a married woman, ever. I guess now that it is here, imminent, it has left me feeling lost. Not melancholy, not relieved, not happy. Just lost, mentally, emotionally. Lost.

I know it's best to part ways now, while the love is still there. I saw what is was to hate him, to truly hate him, and it wasn't pretty. I hated the way it made me feel, filled with rage. That isn't me.

I want to part ways where he can still come over a couple of nights a week after work for dinner, to see the children on his off-days. I want to part ways where we can still have family day, and spend holidays and birthdays together. I guess a part of me hopes one day maybe we will reconcile, and if love remains that will always be in the realm of possibility. I guess what irks me is that I know one or both of us may find someone, and the weekday dinners will dwindle away, and the holidays and birthdays will turn into a polite, obligatory hour or so together, and one day I will come to the house and see another woman in my living room, with her pictures on my walls, and dinner cooking in my kitchen, and no matter how much time goes by or how nice she is, it will kill me. If and when that day comes, it will absolutely kill me.

A part of me wants to stay married. To get our dog, and teach for a few years, and relocate to Oregon with him like he offered. Like I have always wanted. And stay together as a family in our home in the meantime. That part of me thinks this whole thing has gone far enough, there is still love there, still chemistry, and maybe, just maybe, we can fix this thing.

Another part of me thinks we've come too far, there is too much hurt feelings and resentments between us. We need time to heal, to grow. And if we come back to each other, great. And if we don't,  if I find someone, or he finds someone, or we both find someone, then that's how it's supposed to be.

That part of me thinks that perhaps not all of us are destined to stay with the same person for our whole lives. Maybe we were meant to be with one person for a certain season, and someone else for another. Perhaps my husband, my ex-husband, was meant to be with me during my younger season, to travel the world with me, and be the father of my children and co-home owner with, renovating houses and planting gardens. When we had oodles of energy and zest for life and felt like we'd live in blissful harmony forever.

Perhaps there is someone else who is supposed to be with me for the next season of my life, the one after cancer. They say in the cancer world it is BC and AC, before cancer and after cancer. Perhaps my ex was my BC soulmate, and there is someone else out there destined to be my AC soulmate. To have new adventures with, to be there as I advance my teaching career, and write my book, and help raise my kids as they get older.

That doesn't mean it will take away from all of the memories he and I have together. Nothing could take that away. And if we part while the love remains, we can always talk about those days and reminisce and laugh and tell our children all of our stories together. Not look back on those days with bitterness for one another.

Or maybe I will be like the boy in The Alchemist, and realize that Rupert was right in front of me the whole time. But it took traveling to Egypt, or in this case my own home as divorcee, to realize it.

Ultimately I am faced with the choice of let go or be dragged. It hurts like hell, but I am choosing to let go. To let go of my husband. My home. My identity as ''wife.'' I am losing another piece of myself, after losing so much of myself to cancer. God, it hurts. But maybe letting go will bring me new joys, new happiness. Liberation. They say when you're going through hell, keep going.

I need to keep going. I need to let go. As much as it hurts, and rips me apart, I need to let go.