Please don’t hate me if I say my divorce is the best lesson I ever had in my life until now. I don’t want to say cliche things, but it was an eye-opening adventure that leads me to my true self.
Even the divorce lawyer asks if he can add some drama into the paper, so it really looks convincing and normal. Well, I assume he rarely saw a dramaless divorce.
The Beginning
I have been married for 13 years, and I have 2 children. I must be honest with you; the reason I get married is because of lust. You know the feeling when someone is crazy over you, and suddenly you feel like a VIP and the adrenalin rush that you never felt before. The Hormones take over my jiggly and “hunger for everything” self.
You feel very special, dopamine increasing, common sense disappearing, you got the point, right? Can I laugh here? Come on…..
I thought, “Wow, this is it! This man will love me and make me happy, finally”. The idea of being wanted, adored, and needed is giving me thrills and catapulted me into the realm of false imagination.
This is where I completely have forgotten about my own self. Everything I did was for him; I dress nicely for his attention, I say yes to everything. This is like a honeymoon period where everything is cotton candy, rainbow, and unicorn.
Ahh, everything was so beautiful that I don’t want to question anything. I was too afraid to ruin it. It did not last long, though.
The Struggling Period
Most humans learned the most important thing through an intimate relationship. We are just two little kids navigating life and just doing what others are doing.
You know, like accomplish a university degree, getting married, have one boy and one girl, a beautiful house, going on vacation, and post it on social media.
There is nothing wrong with all of those things — the missing link is when we lose our authentic self in fulfilling all of those roles and pretend that we are happy just like everybody else. The fact is everybody is also unhappy, and wanting to be happy is overrated.
Let me tell you a secret, most of the people who tell you that they are happy is just putting a facade to avoid the uncomfortable conversation and unpleasant feeling that may appear.
I am one of those people during my marriage years. Until I can’t lie anymore and put up a smile covering my depression. I was a very introverted, fearful, and anxious person. Until the tornado of courage knock on my door, and suddenly I was brave enough to ask for a divorce. I feel it in my gut.
Then the real tsunami happened and washed away my old self, old identity, and old limiting beliefs. It was a very unbearable moment.
It felt like riding an emotional, nerve-wracking rollercoaster almost every time. Because you are at war with yourself. Fighting the outside to meet the inside. You don’t really know what to do, how to feel, what action to take anymore.
The Realization
Of course, it was challenging because it has gain momentum for almost 40 years. To change something that is already embedded in your DNA, hell yeah, it needs total annihilation. It is supposed to feel like the end of the world.
And oh, I like the song “The End Of The World” by Skeeter Davis. It really represents all the emotions during the dark night of the soul. If you had watched The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix, the scene when this song played, I burst into tears, not really knowing why.
It is good sometimes to really cry and feeling those emotions to honor it and then let it go gracefully.
Our Partner will always be our greatest awakener. Now I have more compassion and understanding for him more than ever. Love has evolved.
The Reborn
This is the butterfly of my journey. I believe everybody has a story to tell that can be beneficial to others. We are all relatable at some point.
Little by little, I am creating my new self and my new identity. To predict the future is to create it. I even need to re-introduce myself again to my friends. Some of them get me, and some don’t. Either way, it is not a problem.
People from your past only resonate with the old version of you that doesn’t exist anymore. They can only see things as deep as they know themselves. Some people don’t even know who they really are.
If some people don’t like you anymore, it is actually a good thing. Own your uniqueness, breathe, and let them go with love.
Sometimes our truth can reflect the things that others don’t want to see in themselves.
So…It’s not about you. We are becoming a mirror and a reflection for anybody who “needs” it.
The Benefit of the Pandemic
This is a rare thing to say, but somehow, this pandemic helps me because it gave me a lot of alone time. The collective fear of humanity is escalating, and it forces me to look inward.
We are forced to see the things that we avoid, to deal with unresolved issues that we’ve shoved down. It is time.
A divorce is an opening act, and the pandemic is the cocooning stage.
Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know it? Because this is the experience you are having right now — Eckhart Tolle
Embrace anything that is happening in your life as a catalyst for growth. This divorce has been a wonderful metamorphosis for me.
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so — William shakespeare
Honor everything that is happening in your life right now, and that is how we grow and evolve as humans.
Use all of the difficulty of this pandemic to turn the inertia into contemplation. Hell Yeah!
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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