I don't know what made me think of the early days the other night. I wish that I could remember the train of thought that led to it but it was 12:52 am and I was half asleep. It's funny how the mind works, isn't it?
Let me take you back to November 2007. We had wanted to buy a house. We had searched and searched so much that I felt sorry for our real estate agent. We couldn't find anything that we both liked so we decided to rent a small beach house for six months. We found a cute cottage in Huntington Beach that was five blocks away from the ocean. It was adorable and had a great yard for barbecuing. What we didn't realize until we moved in was that the "master bedroom" wasn't in fact 10 feet by 10 feet, like we had been told by the owner, but instead it was 8 by 8. It may not sound like much of a difference until you do the math. My queen sized bed barely fit inside and one side of the bed had to be against the wall because of the door and window placement in the room. In other words, one of us had to climb over the other one to get in and out of bed. This was particularly challenging given that I woke up at least a couple times per night to go to the bathroom, which would mean it would make sense for me to be on the outside, but he went to bed and woke up later than me, which would mean it would make sense for him to be on the outside. When I woke up the morning after we had moved and tried to find clothes in the closet, which was basically a terribly designed, very narrow hallway between the two bedrooms, I started crying. I had moved from a 700 square foot condo. I'm not spoiled and I wasn't upset about the space. But the change and the inconvenience that were ahead of me were a bit overwhelming (and I'm sure I was tired, as well). That's when my new roommate looked me in the eye and said, "Let's go for a walk along the beach to Main Street and have breakfast so that we can remember why we moved here." He was supportive and brought me from a place of despair to a happy place.
Of course the thought of that day brought me back to another day not long after the closet breakdown. I had arrived home around 8 pm after a full day of teaching and tutoring after school. I may have even found some time to go for a run at some point. I hadn't planned ahead for dinner so I found some things in the refrigerator and pantry and was able to throw together a pretty tasty meal. "How do you find time to do it all?" At the time, those words made me happy but I had no idea how much I should have appreciated them. The appreciation of the busy nature of my day was the key.
Support and appreciation are the two things that have been lacking in my marriage for a long time. Wow, I have to pause for a moment here. Talking about it in the current tense seems weird but, technically, I am still married for a couple more months. The memory of these two scenarios was the main reason that I held on to my marriage for far too long. I thought, "If he could do it at some point, couldn't he get back to doing it again?" Sadly, the answer ended up being no. Support and appreciation were two of the things that I decided were dealbreakers for me. Of course, there was far more that went into my decision to get divorced.
When I thought about these two scenarios the other night, I still got sad. I still, for a split second, thought that maybe we could get back there. But, in a flash, everything else rushed through my head and I realized that no, we most certainly cannot. Once I came to the conclusion that divorce was best for everyone involved, I never questioned it. Well maybe I should say that my head has never questioned it. But it still makes me sad to think about those two scenarios.
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