an opportunity for growth

Forgive me readers for I have sinned. It has been 10 days since my last confession.

It has also been five years since my divorce. Almost to the hour.

You spend twelve years trying to make something work. A year trying to get your head around the fact that it isn't working and never has. Six weeks in marriage counseling.

Half an hour on the phone hearing the thing you'd suspected all along. The thing that clinches it for you. "I finally found someone beautiful and exciting enough for me." In other words, you weren't it. And he'd been looking for a long time.

A week assembling the necessary paperwork.

And then it only takes five minutes in the courtroom to call it all off for good. To watch a judge flip through your divorce agreement without looking at it, while reciting a speech to you and asking questions without hearing the any of the words.

A wealth of metaphors exist to describe what happened next. Butterflies, flowers, worlds as oysters, and so on. I like to think of myself as one of these. Today, I am 600% larger and 600% happier with 600% more love in my life.

So why do the hours and days leading up to today still hurt, five years later? I don't really know. I have no regrets. I don't miss that old relationship. I can only think that it is because that day five years ago I had to accept the fact that I'd been rejected.