Divorce parties and shifting worldviews

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-04-2005
Divorce parties and shifting worldviews
11
Mon, 03-14-2005 - 9:14am

Hi everyone!

I havent been around in a few days but here I am and I wanted to share some thoughts I've been having.

Yesterday I got a flat tire (again!). I was at STBX's house. I had just dropped off the kids and was about to leave when I discovered I was totally flat. A few months ago I had a flat tire when I was out and I called STBX to come help me, which he did. Later that day I was talking to my father, we'd had a few drinks, and he expressed that he wished I had called him instead and that he was disgusted that STBX didn't buy me a new tire. He told me that he was going to buy me 3 new tires to match the one I just replaced (which he did, later that week.) My softhearted father, as you can gather, is heartbroken over what STBX did to me. Ok, back to the present. Here I was at STBX's house and I called my father to come help me with my tire. I had this wierd sense of stepping out of myself and looking at the situation. I realized that I have made a serious psychological break with STBX. I no longer look to him. It was a freeing feeling.

Also, got my hair cut this week. My hairdresser also works at a fancy restaurant on the waterfront. Too expensive for me to eat at, but they have drinks and appetizers and, with warmer weather, live music. You can sit outside and watch the boats go by. THe crowd is varied in age and classier than your typical "bar", which is not my scene at all. I thought that the restaurant would be a perfect place for a divorce party. My divorce should be final any day. I watched the movie Under the Tuscan Sun recently ( I highly, highly recommend it) and, in one scene, the friend of the newly divorced woman gives her a surprise cake and says that a marriage begins with cake and should end the same way. Beginning and end should be fun, fun, fun. It made me think about how a weddding is filled with such pomp and circumstance and a divorce, which is equally (if negatively) life-changing, is anticlimactic, occuring almost silently. Something should mark it. I'm going to go out with a few girlfriends and my sisters and mother and do something. I hate calling it a divorce party, but I can't think of another name. It will be sort of an I will survive woman thing.

How did (or will) everyone else mark their divorce?

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iVillage Member
Registered: 05-25-2004
Tue, 03-15-2005 - 9:23pm

Wow, Candi, 19 years is a long time. It is a shame that you were not cherished and that you experienced such unhappiness.

You have done a lot for yourself - I am impressed with the karate, ESL instruction and grad school that you are pursuing now.

You are strong. Very strong. My goodness - if you can make it through all of that and do so well mentally as you are now you are going to do more than survive now - you will definitely find what you want.

I read the neastest zen saying and thought of all of us - but it would definitely apply to you.

A quick summary is that our journey is like climbing a mountain. We must make EVERY step count. And yet not count the steps or ever think they are too hard or too many. For one day we will arrive at our summit.

http://www.dailyzen.com/zen/zen_reading11.asp

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