Life has been interesting, to say the very least.
When I first drafted up this post, I wrote it as three lessons that I’ve learned since my divorce. But, looking back on it before hitting publish, I’m realizing that it doesn’t speak to me anymore. It just didn’t feel authentic.
Because, in all honesty, I made a decision a while back to not live focused on my divorce anymore. (Much easier said than done, I know… keep reading, I promise.)
Life is hard. All of us get put in some really shitty spots. 1.4 million unique readers read my post from last month thus far. 1.4 MILLION. Almost 1 million within the first four days alone. And several of you wrote me emails and messages sharing how you related to the story, how you found hope in the perspective, how you recognize that you’re not alone in the shit you’re going through. (In fact, I still have 322 more emails to get back to related to the blog post and I promise that I’m reading each and every one and am getting back to you ASAP.)
That doesn’t even count the amazing friends and family I’ve had supporting me along this journey, of which there are so many.
There is no way that I could repay the kindness and love you all have shown me throughout these past few months, but I promise I’ll try.
But here’s the tough truth. We’re all going to be put in a tough spot someday. We’re going to have some type of traumatic experience happen to us. We need to remember that, at the end of the day, this life is really f’ing awesome.
If you had asked me six months ago where I’d be right now, I’d be living with my husband, potentially have a puppy, and we’d be prepping to try to have our first child potentially in 2018.
And, I’ll be honest, it’s still really, really hard for me to say that that vision is no longer a reality. At times, that life still sounds so beautiful and idyllic. Truthfully, that is still my dream. I still 100% want a family and some land one day… along with more dogs running around than I can count.
But, for whatever reason, life will never go exactly as we’ve planned. It is up to us to not be strangled by our past, but to be strengthened by it.
I have literally NO idea what my life is going to look like moving forward. Heck, if you asked me less than three months ago, that vision I mentioned was still going to be my reality. But he left me in one of the worst ways I could have imagined after 4.5 years together… and you’ll never really see how toxic someone is until you breathe fresher air. I’ve learned that sometimes you have to let go of what’s killing you, even if it’s killing you to let go.
So when I look back on these past two months, I can strangely, honestly say that I’ve had a lot of fun. I’m living between Denver, Chicago, and Breckenridge, started re-doing one home, rented and furnished a beautiful new apartment in Denver with a view of the mountains, bought a new car, went skydiving on what would have been our first anniversary to mark a new chapter in my life, hiked my 8th mountain over 14,000 feet (14er), worked incredibly hard to grow my business to already over-achieve on my financial goals for the year, and have been just generally enjoying life.
I can’t say that I’m completely over him and that I’m completely ready to move on to the next relationship yet. I sleep well knowing that I unconditionally loved him with honesty and more than anyone else will in the entire world, and we all know that we don’t actually move on from that in what is now one day over two months. But I’m dealing with all of that mental shit through therapy so that it doesn’t come creeping back up in 5 or 10 years. (If you think you’re too cool for therapy, let’s talk. Because you’re not. No one is.)
But when something traumatic happens to us, we get the opportunity to make a big choice for our life. And when I look back on this turning point in my life, I want to be proud of myself and say that, while I took the time to grieve, I decided to be happy.
Difficult roads often lead to beautiful destinations. And I cannot wait to see where this road is taking me.
