One Last “It’s All About Meeeee”

I recognize that this blog is quite self-serving. But I need to tell someone this stuff as I go through it, and my faithful 15 readers give me just the encouragement I need. Maybe all this will end up in a book someday. At least, that’s what I tell myself to justify being so self-serving.

So this week I started really feeling the feels about the fact that my marriage ended and my ex moved on right away. Okay, obviously I was already feeling those a while ago, based on the last few posts. But I felt them hard this week. Found myself sitting on the floor in my walk-in closet, crying. More than once.

This is good. Only way out is through and all that.

It feels awful. I’m treating it like a case of Emotional Flu. Time will eventually pass and so will this feeling.

In the meantime there’s the floor of the closet and glasses of red wine and really, really bad poetry that you will thank me not to share.

And today, perhaps once and for all but time will tell, today I’d had enough. I had ventured out of the walk-in closet to the middle of the master bedroom, a room that is gigantic in floorspace now that I have removed the California King bed and installed a twin. I’m small; I seriously don’t need the bed I used to call the Isle of Sleep. My little postage stamp is quite adequate.

But that leaves enough room in the master bedroom to host a small dance party. So today I was sitting on the floor, wine glass in hand, crying as it hit me that I was sitting where the marriage bed used to be. Because I’ve said this before – this was never the plan. I wasn’t supposed to be alone right now. I meant those vows and intended to be in it for the long haul.

But he didn’t.

After many tears and strangled prayers and texts to my bestie, I suddenly sat up straight and said, “Hey, wait a minute. This is MY bedroom. I own this house now. It’s MINE.” (I bought the ex out by cashing in half of my half of the retirement plan).

I was suddenly furious that the past was robbing me of enjoying the miracle of the present, because seriously… I never dreamed that I would own a house, by myself, in Los Angeles County, where, given the latest real estate bubble, even broken-down houses like mine are worth close to a million dollars.

So I stood up, put down the glass and told the memories, and whatever else was hanging on, to leave. I had already prayed through the house, last year, banishing any vestiges of the narcissism and lies and confusion and poverty my ex deposited wherever he walked. I felt like that bad juju was trying to enter back into the house again today, but I refused it entry. This is my house. We have moved on from that.

And that was that.

Hopefully permanently. Because seriously. It’s not just the house. It’s my life. It’s MY life. I wasted 30 years of life on that nonsense. He doesn’t get one more day of my life.

And now to write that book…

Behold, I am doing a new thing;
    now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
    and rivers in the desert.

Isaiah 43:19