Linky Blog – First Day

Deviating from the comical whimsy for a glimpse into a window of my life before Point Five came along.

My First Day after my (ex) husband left.

The story of how we got to that day is a long and windy one, but it was in Ayers Rock where we were living  and working that we decided to end our three year marriage. Somehow we had managed to get right back to where we were 18 months earlier, when he wasn’t coming home for days at a time, preferring to hang out with mates than come home to me and be a husband. We had been having counselling back then and after getting nowhere, we separated, very messily and horribly for a few months.  It was a truly awful part of my life and Adult Chicken Pox got thrown in there just for laughs too. Murphy is truly a bastard.

Deciding our marriage was worth another shot we tried to be grown ups about it and created some goals and milestones of where we wanted to be as a couple. Part of that plan was to work for a fantastic company which owned dozens of luxury resorts around Australia and work our way up the chain until we could afford for me to stop work and have kidlets. Our first stop was Ayers Rock. I worked HERE and he managed a Restaurant HERE.  I could do a whole other post about living and working out there – it was amazeballs. Totally. I am not a religious person but there was something out there at that rock. Cereal.

ANYWAY

It was a Monday night and we were walking back to our unit from a staff member farewell. We had been living out there, the start of our journey together, a fresh start, for three months.

After a month of newness and enjoyment the same habits started to emerge, we had morphed back into the past. We had simply shifted our problems to another State, or Territory as it was. They weren’t gone and nothing had changed, just geography. We both just kind of realised that although we loved each other it was over.  We just weren’t meant to be married. Neither of us were happy – I was miserable, crying myself to sleep alone, night after night, waiting for him to come home to me. Waiting. He just disappointed me and himself over and over. A loop of addiction as it turned out. Another story.

Sometimes marriage is just a piece of paper – and you need to give yourself permission to screw it up, throw it in the bin and start again.

ANYWAY

I said I wouldn’t move, as I loved it there and I didn’t know how I would face my life back home – what a disappointment I was with a marriage that barely lasted 3 years. I had nothing. I had given up my dream job back home, I had no home and no car as we agreed he would get my car (a sporty red thing which he wrote off barely three months later – sob sniff. It went to the wreckers with my wedding ring in the centre console – writing on the wall!) and I would get the furniture we had placed in storage. He applied for a transfer to one of their QLD resorts and on the following Thursday morning at 8am he left.

There were many tears, hugs, sad looks, wistful thoughts, a peck on the cheek of a final goodbye kiss and then a closed door.

I was still in bed.

My first day being physically single – he was driving away, to another place, without me.

Forever.

  I literally felt the weight of the world lift off my shoulders as I lay there.

Seriously. It was palpable.

I could almost feel my body levitate and with the tears of regret and waste still wet on my cheek,

I couldn’t help smiling.

Even grinning.

I was free.

Free from the guilt, the pain, the sorrow, the lies, the hope and the disappointment.

So much disappointment.

I didn’t have to TRY anymore, I could just BE.

Me.

It was surreal.

And awesome.

And fantastic.

And peaceful.

I wanted to stay in bed all day and soak it in.

But I got up and went to work, as a newly physically single, yet mentally single for quite a while, woman.

 I shagged the chef at the place I worked that night.

Because I could.

And he understood.

And he was hot.

Um-mah.

Bite Me.