Fifteen years ago

On this day fifteen years ago, I walked in to the Hays County Courthouse in San Marcos, Texas to have a judge approve the so called collaborative divorce that ended my first marriage.

I had already moved from Dripping Springs back to Fort Worth, so I had to drive over three hours each way.

I remember what I wore. I remember how humiliated I was; how angry; how scared; how sad. I felt utterly alone, and I was. My ex brought his parents and the woman for whom he ended our marriage to the festivities. I faced the day on my own.

Thanks to a fundamentalist Christian upbringing that seriously distorted my view of marriage, at that point in time, I seriously thought divorce was the absolute worst thing that could or would ever happen to me. I laugh out loud now when I think how pathetically naive I was, even at 31 years old.

I have since lost my grandfather, my dad, both of my dogs, the best husband I ever had and my grandmother; to say nothing of icons and friends and hopes and dreams.

Yet, I’m up.

I stand at the start of a new year, a new decade, an entirely new chapter in my life. The dynamics of my immediate family relationships have shifted so seismically I am now completely free to build a life that is authentically mine, and I’m giddy at the prospect!