New Year

2012 was a strange year. The few people I know well who are divorced say that their first year was the roughest, ugliest year of their life. They were happy to see the back end of it. 2012 certainly was not easy, but interspersed with its moments of abject despair were moments of brightness.

2012 saw the dawning of a new me. Someone self-confident, independent, and sure. The person I'd become at work, where I'd been promoted twice in three years, was spreading to other parts of my life. I overcame my shyness and fear of a roomful of people to mingle in. I was calm and at ease with new people. I made conversation - both small talk and meaningful connections. I learned to be vulnerable with friends and trust that they would still love me. I learned to speak my mind and understand my tastes. I learned that I am important, too. My opinions matter. And I learned to live like I believed it.

2012 also saw moments of intense self-doubt and second questioning and fear. I remember crying alone in the deep, dark night, knowing that I would surely die alone, unloved, unwanted. I remember feeling incredibly small and insignificant. There were moments of feeling completely friendless. Completely rudderless. Completely empty. And tired, so very, very tired.

For all its ups and downs, for all its pain and suffering, I would not trade 2012 or wish it never happened. I do not regret 2012, for it has taught me much and left me with a better, stronger me. I do, however, look forward to 2013, and hope and pray it has more ups than downs, more hope than despair, more peace than anxiety. I hope that for all three of us.

the D word

It has been over a year since I set out on my own, my girls with me half time, my heart with them full time. Just over a year ago, I left the family home I'd settled into with my husband, left the comfort of dual incomes, left the safety of a having a backup parent, left the security of being married. The reasons are, as always, more complicated than one can describe in a blog post, deeper than a few paragraphs can convey, too intimate to share with the world. And they are immaterial to the life I will describe here.

When I had first decided I would move out permanently, I took a week off work to deal with the emotions, with the details, with the panic attacks that followed phone calls and appointments that set up my new housing. I couldn't bring myself to tell people at work what had happened, but I didn't want them to ask me how my husband was doing. So I dispatched two good work friends to tell the rest, quietly, that I was separating. Within weeks, I learned to accept my new situation, learned to say, "I'm separated."

After a year of separation, it became clear that a final decision, one way or another, was in order. My life in limbo, in the in-between place, needed formality. It needed direction. And we settled upon formal and final separation. A d....

The D word is one that I have uttered fewer than five times in the month since we decided. I was talking to a friend of mine who is also separated about it.

"I know, right? It's just such an ugly word!"

And I agreed. Separated is a smoother, kinder word. D... is harsh, angry, almost violent.

But it is my new reality. I head into the world, not just a separated person, but soon to be a divorcée. I'm building a life on my own, with my two little girls. We are settled nicely into a little house I rent, not far from their dad's house so that the commute back and forth isn't too rough. Nestled among the little houses on our narrow street is our red-doored A-framed house, we've made a home for the three of us.

This is the story of that home.