Letting go is a tricky thing. It feels like your heart is attached to an anchor and that you are forever connected to feelings that you so desperately want to move past. I started dating my now ex-husband when I was 16 years old. We moved in together when I was 17 (almost 18) and he was 21. BABIES. That fall I started my senior year of high school. We were married in the fall of 1998. I was 22. He was 26. We had our first child in 2001. We had our second child in 2003. I became a stay-at home Mom. We bought, sold, built, sold, bought, and sold 3 homes before putting an addition on his parents house and moving in with them in 2008. (side note: as much as I love his parents, this was a very VERY bad idea.)
Somewhere in 2010 things started going downhill for us. Money was becoming a constant source of anxiety. He was getting more and more depressed. I was completely shutting him out. There were A LOT of factors, but the bottom line is our relationship was dying and neither of us could figure out how to save it.
In 2012 we divorced. And although I had come to terms with "the end" and was in a much better place emotionally, I still had this feeling that my heart was anchored to that relationship. With my hindsight glasses on, I see that our co-dependent patterns were playing out even during and post our divorce.
Truthfully, I was looking for HIM to tell me everything was going to be ok. I wanted him to tell me that he still loved me and we would always be a team, even if we weren't married. <---- nuts, right??
It has taken me the better part of the year after our divorce to understand what I was holding onto. And I get it. That relationship defined me. There was no separating ME from ME&him. And even though the divorce did just that - it moved me and him into separate lives - I was anchored in the history of our relationship.
It's a HUGE work in progress. Removing the anchor. Letting go.
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