Ten years ago I was that perfect woman

I was that perfect woman. That may make no sense to you, or it may make all the sense in the world. I’m that woman who was happy, successful, accomplished, three beautiful daughters, one amazing husband and a great home. I’m that woman who believed in love and fairy tales, who was happily-ever-after married, who had met her soul mate, who also was her best friend, and dedicated herself to him entirely.

I’m also that woman whose marriage ended with a piece of paper.

Yip…that woman.

You see, I heart symbols. Always have. My mother loves symbols and that paper was a sign.

So when I opened up some old mail — set aside thinking it was junk mail from a bank, what I found was gut-wrenching, soul-twisting, ugly, to even imagine — well, the symbol was too strong to not feel somehow tricked by some higher power. The mail was stating in black and white, a money transferred to a woman from my then husband’s bank account he had opened without me knowing.

I mean, come on: It hit me like nothing else.

As my face turned pale and all the saliva disappeared from my mouth, I had to think no, there must be an explanation for this. I couldn’t think of the worse, not my husband!

I rejected all the sayings about cheaters entering my head — every one of them that quickly made its way into and out of my brain at the moment my life changed forever — every one of them talked about being stupid, doing pointless things or being blindsided.

There it was: the heartless cynical universe, laughing at me hysterically… because I had heard of so many jokes about men and their extramarital affairs and it wasn’t funny.

So at this point, perhaps I need to share some details about that letter. First it was one of those letters from a bank that you get on the mail for example stating a transaction set directly to your home but they also seemed like any other piece of junk mail you get from banks offering you from credit cards to life insurance and didn’t look too important.

My than husband had wired $2,000 to a woman in El Salvador and the letter was only stating those facts.  Apparently, my adoring husband had sent this money to a woman by the name of Angeles.  I read the letter with interest, because it just seemed so odd.

I got all concerned and called him at work to ask who was this woman he was sending money to? He first accused me of hiring a detective or something but I simply explained the letter had come to our home. He then told me he would explain all to me when he got home. 

As you can probably figure out based on the information I gave you, my 22+ years of marriage as I knew it ended that day. He and I had been together more than 1/2 of my life — and yet this letter marked the end of our family.

That letter changed my life. In an instant I had seen the end of my marriage in all its stunning flat-screen glory.

The rest, as they say, is history. But it’s still recent history to me, as this bit of bad news hit me over the head only a day before I was to leave town on April 27, 2004. Since then, what has occurred looks nothing like the popular conceptions of divorce prescribe. In fact, it’s been just the opposite.

I’m a mature woman. I thought he was a mature man. Yet we’re definitely not sitting next to each other at any of our three daughter’s weddings. The memory is so distant now of him holding hands with our youngest daughter, she holding hands with her big sister, her big sister holding hands with the middle child and she holding hands with me as we would kneel in prayers and do what we used to call circle of LOVE, the five of us still connected like a paper cut-out against a sunny horizon is no MORE!

Nope. It’s been sheer chaos, utter hell, the worst days of my life.

And here I am sharing my story with you, because I, my friends, am an expert on how to handle this. (Not really.) Perhaps I can help you live through a divorce gracefully. (That’s a total lie.) Because I have been the perfect image of honesty, grace and understanding. (I wish.)

Sometimes I lie just to make myself feel better. That’s one of my coping mechanisms.

Actually, here I am a little more than ten years later, and I feel like I have a story to tell. I’ve been silent too long — mostly out of sheer guilt (self-imposed and other-imposed, but mainly by  people who I’m sure feel terrified at the thought of a mortifying combination of my words, their actions and the one venue afforded by this blog).

I need to say it again: I’ve been silent far too long.

This post is not to vent but to be my honest, sometimes irreverent attempt to offer insights into the complexity of divorce, with dealing with the subsequent forced reinvention that occurs post-divorce; with coping when your heart is ripped from your chest as you are forced to leave your grandchildren for the other family to have equal time. As I sob telling myself it is what it is even when I want nothing more than to stay with them forever and never leave.

I have learned so much, yet I still have much to learn. I am stronger in many ways, but so much weaker in others. Well, I found a sweet perfect man to marry and I gave him a chance.  That was a HUGE step.

And that happened a year after the final divorce document was signed.

I hope you’ll join me in this journey — and forgive me for once in a while selfishly sharing seemingly mindless details that I just NEED to share. I promise, though, this will not become an endless rant or a place to bash; instead, I’m hoping to focus on reinvention —

I do hope you’ll offer your thoughts, send feedback, call me names, spread the word. There are too many of us who feel guilty because “forgiveness” is the ultimate goal or because “you can make this work if you just try.”

Not so. I’m living proof.

Apparently, there is an old Irish proverb that reads, “A grudge is a beautiful thing.” But I am trying my very hardest to not feel a thing!