Ketchup, Cats and Other Reasons for My Divorce

I don’t talk much about my divorce. Probably because it’s not much to talk about. It’s completely undramatic, anticlimactic, boring. No one walked in on the other ‘bangin’ on the counter’ or anything. Our marriage just wasn’t working. We are different people pursuing different lives.

For example; I loathe cats with the burning passion of a thousand fiery suns. My husband has three. Or had, rather. One of them was wretched enough that he got rid of it of his own accord, but I still was forced to share my home with two putrid, emetic, shedding, box-shitting, litter-tracking assholes. So that was a thing.

Also, he’d ruin perfectly good meals by obliterating them with half a bottle of ketchup. It was totally insulting.

Never mind the fact that he’s vegan and straightedge, and I’m a partyrockin’ fun-haver and regularly unhinge my jaws around a Quarter Pounder before I even get out of the drive-thru.

Yes, that’s all tongue in cheek. Prior to actually living apart, and experiencing a new relationship after the dissolution of my marriage, I honestly thought this was what my divorce was about. Minor differences in values. It was months after my separation before I came to terms with everything I’d been sweeping under the rug.

I was completely unloved. Ignored. Emotionally neglected. I don’t want to paint an ugly portrait of my husband, because he really is a very nice man and a wonderful father. He was just a terrible partner for me. In retrospect, I can’t remember a time in which we were ever in love. There were times when he pursued me and I ignored it (too little, too late), but when I reflect upon the ten years we spent together, I was so much more into him than he was into me. It got old. I can pinpoint the exact moment when my eyes glazed over and lost interest. Unfortunately, your feelings of self worth can only weather so much storm. I never thought I could do better for myself. I never imagined that I’d ever feel passion and excitement with anyone. I had committed and invested so much into this that it was just too much of a burden to walk away. So I stayed. And we got married. And we had children. And we lived in uncomfortable silence for years until a stranger gave me the strength to say “THAT IS ENOUGH”.

And that couldn’t have happened at a worse time. I’m struggling- financially, emotionally, physically. I’m fighting with long-dealt with orthorexia and binge eating, issues that I thought I’d laid to rest as a teenager. I’m probably an alcoholic. I often rely on tranquilizing medications to slow my heart and my brain down enough to let me fall into a psychotropic medication induced coma.

Lets be real here, I’m totally fucked. I’m not even stuck between a rock and a hard place. I’m jammed between two techtonic plates. And I have absolutely NO plan. I am running solely on adrenalin and drugs to get me through each hour, each day, each week, until I can finally get a grasp on something sturdy enough to let me take foot. So that’s where I’m at.