You are worthy of the release. You are worthy of being free from all the things that broke your heart.

— Author Unknown.

It is the day after my divorce. The sun shines, skies are blue with tufts of white. It’s chillier today than it has been, a hiccup in the unseasonably-early spring-like weather that has washed Massachusetts since February. I spotted the earliest buds on bushes today as I walked to a Dance Jams class I decided to try out at the YMCA. Since I’ve been having an issue with my lower back, I’ve had to call off my usual running routine after almost 20 years.

At 36 (going on 37 in May), I feel I’m too young for such pains, but the human body is as vulnerable and delicate as it is strong and resilient. Clearly, something has gone awry — perhaps from this past summer (2019), when I worked 12-hour laborious days on a local farm — an exploration in interests and a personal sabbatical that was far more physical exertion than I could have ever imagined. I fear a disc may be out of place, yet I hesitate to put much medical diagnosis behind it at this point. I’ll take my chances in first switching up my physical routines. I have decided that dancing is for me, and I’ll try and make it a Saturday morning habit. That, and morning swims twice a week, combined with long walks and weekly yoga. I’ve got this.

So. My divorce. The first and only, I hope. After almost five years of marriage, and four years of internal and external struggle, we — my husband and I — made it official. On a rainy Friday the 13th, we went to the county courthouse — the same county in which we were married, though we’ve completed two cross-country moves in that time — and filed a 1A (walk-in) divorce. There were three other couples, and I marveled at how calm and contained and even amiable they appeared. Not me, not we.

From the get-go, I was all nerves — irritated that my husband had waited until that morning to print out his financials, though I had most everything else in order. We drove together, though we hardly exchanged two words. My heart raced as we stood in line, and I snapped at him and called him a name when he made a rude remark about not being in line for paternity (divorce and paternity being one line). When the woman at the counter told us we needed to fill out a new form because the lawyer my husband had hired did not fill it out correctly, the dam broke and all I had been holding onto gave way.

Tears fell, I shook trying to control the floodgates; I also felt my husband soften. He told me it would be alright, that we would get through this, lightly touched my shoulder. I asked a man at another counter for tissues, and he looked at me as if I had trees growing out of my ears. “My tissues are upstairs, I don’t usually work down here,” he barked. I muttered a “thanks for nothing”, appalled that there were no tissues to be found in the whole of the registrar’s office (though there was plenty of hand sanitizer on defense against Covid 19).

Then we waited in courtroom #1 with three other couples for our case to be reviewed by the presiding female judge. I’d brought a book with me but could not read, could not do anything but watch and listen and wait for our turn, sitting on that bench in a New England courtroom that was as overcast inside as out, excepting the light of the desk lamp where the judge sat reviewing files. And then, we were before her. Nothing out of the ordinary, the questions seemed the mandated type. The details of our agreement aren’t important, though basically it’s as if we are going back to the way things were before we ever became a couple. Though things are not the same, they will never be the same. And for that, I at least… am grateful.

What is important is the reason that brought us to this place in time, to two people standing next to each other and stating that, after four years of disagreement and two rounds of couples counseling (separated by two years) — these two, who had sworn their lives to one another and meant it — that there was, is, no hope for reconciliation. To put it simply (though I’ve learned it’s anything but) — I want to be a mother, deep in my bones (though I tried countless times to grow out of it). My husband has no such desire, nowhere in his heart (though he tried his best to dig it up). In the end, we both made promises that we couldn’t keep.

To say that this experience was surreal, on Friday the 13th and in the midst of the Coronavirus panic no less, is an understatement. The drive home was a blur of raindrops and stifled, leftover tears. We parted with scant words. I stopped at Whole Foods on the way home and stocked up on food for the week, arrived home and decided to rearrange my entire studio apartment, then fell into a dream-ridden sleep for 2 hours with my cats snuggled on either end. I don’t remember the details of my dream, only the feeling of acute sadness. When I woke, I took two weeks’ worth of laundry to the laundromat, then came back home and did a deep clean of all the nooks and crannies. My way, I think, of releasing all that no longer serves me.

I did not expect life to ever take this turn, and as I grow older and wiser I realize that the unexpected is the only constant we have in life — that, and our choice of practicing optimism and hope or feeling the victim of uncontrolled chaos. There are times when I find myself dipping my toes in the latter. But, most days, I find my foundation and breath in hope, and the knowing that while I always seem to learn the hard way and to be a consistent late bloomer, there is authenticity in the choices I’ve made. And there is meaning in those choices.

Over the next few months, I will start the path of becoming a single mother by choice. In many ways, I began months ago. I plan on using this blog as a place to document my journey, my thoughts, hopes, fears, and epiphanies. There is much that remains uncertain, much to decipher and decide on over the next 6 months to a year. But it starts here and now, with this seed of hope that I carry with me wherever I go — that one day soon, I will become a mother and meet the tiny person for whom, without meeting my husband, would have never been.

~Mother Intuition