What happened to me
If only I had been gifted a brilliant career as a successful, childless writer, I, too, could have jetted off to Italy, India, and Indonesia to eat, pray, and love. But while Elizabeth Gilbert partook of the exotic pleasures of the world, I was an everyday housewife.
In the wake of ending a destructive marriage, I inherited two kids, a dog, and an intimate relationship with creditors. An affordable destination for me was traveling to 7-Eleven for Ben and Jerry’s at midnight.
I realized I had become a participant in “domesticide.” It’s my word. I made it up. It’s this housewife’s word for the mental suicide you commit when, after years of abuse, you dare to depart the marital domicile.
Let me be clear that domesticide doesn’t happen at the time of divorce. The actual moment you split up is simply when you find out what you’ve been doing to yourself for years, most likely ever since childhood. Domesticide denotes the slow death of who you really are by what you have become through endlessly chasing the elusive “happily ever after.”
The signs of big trouble were apparent in my recurring sexual fantasy of my husband being run over by a large lawnmower with rusty blades. It became abundantly clear to me that obsessively fantasizing about the freedom one would gain by redeeming a spouse’s life insurance was not healthy.
My exploration of awakening was a bit different than E.G’s. I did, however, eat. Well, more accurately, binging. Chocolate bars, ice cream and chips. I do seem to remember one desperate night being curled up on the bathroom floor quickly gulping an entire pint of gelato.
I also prayed. Well, perhaps it was more like swearing:
“Jesus f’ing Christ, what did I do in my last life to deserve this f’ing bulls*it?”
Each year of the fifteen-year marriage, I gave away more power. When I left, I paid a price. Someone once said, “As goes the marriage, so goes the divorce.” Amen. Did I really think my ex would do anything other than “cut off the funding?” No surprise there.
I took the only job my blank resume could find me- car sales. That job saved my kids and me from poverty.
Now, post-menopause, with a career as an award-winning writer, I give a bow and a courtesy to both the flowers and weeds in the Garden that grew me.
What I learned
Time weaves us but not in a linear way. We move in and out and come to know deeper truths in enlightened moments by spiraling again and back to past events seen in fresh ways. We take bits and pieces and see the reshaping.
In the long body of memory it is a clarifying, cleansing experience. We don’t dump our histories. We revisit and make fresh old memories and see them without the pain and confusion.
What I wish I'd known then
There is no cookie-cutter formula for peace. We have to land our personal truth on the runway of our unique experience. No two people have had the same life path nor were they born with the same DNA. We are the pilot. We're at the helm. It's not up to the Collective Authority to decide what or who we are. It's not about Happily Ever After, it's about Authentically Ever Now.
