A Physical Reminder of My Divorce

There are both physical and emotional reminders of divorce. I exercise the emotional ones through my writing. The physical ones I’ve yet to shed. Literally shed.

I still carry 20 pounds of divorce weight.

I have an additional physical reminder of my divorce. It used to be one of the things I liked about myself. It was what people commented on. I’ll get to that in a moment.

Both the physical and the emotional reminders of divorce are challenging.

But the physical can form a constant reminder.

We can’t bury them as we often do with our emotions. We can’t hide them. They’re external. It’s evident for all to see. At least, those who knew us in the ‘before and after’ of divorce.

It’s crazy because it’s what’s most in our control.

Yet I still haven’t tackled the remaining weight I gained during divorce.

I tried to select a picture where you could better see the other physical reminder of divorce that I wear. But the close up I attempted to enlarge just made my face look scary lol.

At least, as the title photo shows.

I’ve included it at the bottom of this so that you can see the true shift that has occurred in my teeth. The title photo doesn’t bother me. The angle somehow camouflages it.

I recognize my smile.

In many other photos I do not.

It doesn’t look like me, not to me.

I think we all have things we don’t like about ourselves, and things that we do. It wouldn’t be confidence if we loved everything, it would be arrogance.

As my once 14-year-old teenage self bemoaned to my mom, “Ugh. I’ve got squinty eyes, a pug nose, and horse teeth.”

My mother didn’t miss a beat.

“Well,” she said. “It’s a good thing all those bad things go together so well.”

You gotta love moms. Especially mothers who realize those big teeth might benefit from braces. I may have fought her on it. I’m grateful she overruled me. As if I had a chance.

My teeth began shifting during my overly long and abusive divorce.

The dentist told me it was from my inability to sleep. The unpredictability and severe bullying my husband inflicted left me restless. I would wake up repeatedly during the night.

The sleep induced stress caused grinding and clenching.

Before anyone mistakes this to be about looks, it is not. And anyone who has gone through a brutal divorce understands this. I write this because we can feel as if we lose ourselves during a divorce.

We can have moments of not recognizing ourselves.

Of losing the best within us.

It’s an identity grab.

A high-conflict divorce is ugly. It festers and fosters an ugliness within our person, our world, and our worth. We struggle to reclaim and resurrect the better side of who we are.

A person not yet emotionally infected.

We want to look at others and internally recognize ourselves. We want to look in a mirror and physically recognize ourselves. We’ve already sacrificed too much by staying too long.

There’s also the combustion of the emotional and physical.

I remember gazing in a mirror long before my teeth had shifted, long before the weight gain. I still didn’t recognize myself externally. The light within me was gone.

There was no joy in my eyes, nor my smile.

Again, anyone who has suffered an exhaustive and abusive divorce understands I speak of the physical that has manifested because of the emotional.

The good news?

I’ve worked on the emotional.

My smile in the title photo is real. There’s a light within me again. There’s joy in my eyes. I’ve done the work. I’ve come out on the other side. I may have some financial stress but I’m happy.

I can work on the weight.

I can get my teeth corrected back to their original mom induced braces form. I can recognize myself physically again. I can heal internally and externally.

I write this because I know people who’ve lost their hair, lost too much weight, gained weight, had high blood pressure, and more. I myself had surface blood clots that the doctor felt was induced by divorce stress.

It’s been an exhaustive and unnecessary journey.

A 50 billion dollar industry that is antiquated and allows people to get away with abuse and injustice. And high-conflict divorce that can last years in duration.

It’s so brutal the stress can manifest itself physically.

Yet the family law system remains the same. Because it’s not divorce that’s bad. It’s people behaving badly in divorce. And how they’re permitted to get away with it.

**Aforementioned pic below the following article links.