Divorce....

I am someone's ex-wife. If M had a miracle and changed back to the person he was before, we would have to go through another ceremony in order to be considered married. Not that that's an option, but those two ideas just shake me to my core. This is the person I pledged to be with until death. When I was younger, I used to hope I would die first because I would miss him too much if he did. When I got a little older, I started planning my career path around the possibility that ten years from now I might have to institutionalize him. I never dreamed that I'd be his ex-wife and miss the person he was so much and never want to see the person he is again. I never believed I'd get a divorce against my will, be a left and wronged spouse, and get screwed entirely in the process.

I've cried occaisionally in private and in front of friends, but I make quips about selling the stuff he left in my house, giving away his beer (I don't like alcohol) to friends, and talk about giving the packaged food he left that I don't eat to a food pantry. Overall this does not really relate to how I feel when I'm not distracted by the daily business of work and class and etc.

There's a knot in my chest, and my stomach feels nervous like I'm waiting to hear whether I or a close friend has a serious disease. Does anyone know when this feeling goes away?

On a slightly more positive yet harried note, I went to my last class yesterday. I am just a couple of final assignments (hence the harried part, since I will be working on them all weekend) away from degree number three. I won't fool myself, I'll go back to school as soon as I get an employer to pay my tuition. I love school. But this is the first time I've left school without having registered for classes for the next semester. I've never NOT been in school since kindergarten. Leaving that schedule behind will be strange.

I promise that someday these accounts will get brighter. Still, this blog was created as a place I could let off steam and ruminate about the sorry state of my life. I guess y'all were warned.

I want to move out of town so badly. I know that a new city won't magically solve my problems, but it would force me to create new routines in new places that won't continually remind me of my deep feeling of loss, pain, and anger. Because of his illness, I had resigned myself to living here for the rest of my life. Both of our families are in town and would have been helpful as he deteriorated. So at this time last year I would have never dreamed that I would be planning to live in Chicago or New York by this time next year, if not sooner.

So I'm hoping I can make a life somewhere else that will be my life, one that feels like more than what I would have had instead of somehow less than I should have had.

It's all still a little hard to believe.