So, it’s been a year since the divorce was final--just over a year to be exact. It would be nice to apply the cliché phrase “my how time flies” to my life, but I can’t do that because it’s simply not true. To be fair, time hasn’t stood still either, but the year has been full of so many challenges, ups, downs, and new experiences (good and bad) that I find myself feeling and (sadly) looking older than I should because I’m so tired of swinging from emotion to emotion and climbing up a few notches on life’s ladder just to get kicked back down again. It’s exhausting. But I’m not broken. At least not yet. Let’s go with bruised.

            So here’s the scorecard. After a summer of living in various hotels, the home I had built was completed in early fall. I assumed the house would be the solution to all of our squabbles, emotional breakdowns, and bad habits like eating out, kids getting used to sleeping with me, overspending, and lack of routine. We move in, and the oldest goes to a brand new school—the very thing I was sure would put her in therapy for life. Turns out, no therapy or even a box of tissues were needed. She thrived. She made great friends, made honor roll every session, won the school spirit award, and really fell in love with her teachers and the school. The youngest daughter’s education wasn’t disrupted, as she stayed in the same pre-school. I was safe there. So, education worries? Resolved.

            I made sure to create perfect bedrooms for each child in our new house so they would finally have their own space and re-discover all of their toys and belongings that lived in storage for four months. The excitement of being re-united with long, lost Barbies and falling into their old beds lasted for about five minutes. Every night, for almost a year, I have found them either at the side of my bed or in it, saying they are scared in their own rooms afraid of our new house. My guilt over moving them from the house they’ve always known overcomes me every time, and I let them crawl in, as they snuggle up to me on each side, giving me just enough room each night to turn my head slightly to the left or right. None of us get adequate sleep, but I’m so tired at the end of the day, I just can’t fight the bedtime wars. Sleep issues? Unresolved.

            I promised myself that once we were settled in the new house, we would create new rituals, such as eating dinner together every night, making sure the kids had their own responsibilities and chores each week, a firm bed time, a ban on junk food, an extreme reduction in eating out… the list goes on. Let’s see. We probably eat together around the table, at home, once a week. We most likely eat out three or more times a week. There is a chore chart on the refrigerator, but even I’m too busy to make sure it’s always enforced. Because the kids won’t step foot in their rooms or upstairs playroom without me, they usually go to bed when I do which is too late for their ages. This leaves them tired and me without “me time” during the evenings. In other words, we’re a functioning mess. I spend about two hours a day in my car commuting back and forth to work and back and taking the kids to their various activities. Evenings during the school year are filled with homework and other school projects. Spare time is usually spent at a dance school, a horse camp, a piano teacher’s house, and on and on and on. Between work, school, barking orders at the kids, and getting in and out of the car 20 times a day, it’s really no surprise the three of us go from feeling like we never see each other to seeing each other way too much—depending on our mood. Routine established? Not so much.

            Overspending. Ah, this is a fun one. It’s no secret divorce is filled with immense sadness. It’s also filled immense debt. The first hit comes with the lawyer bill. Someone has to pay it, and that someone was me. On top of that I had to pay, for a short time, the expenses of living in a large, insanely expensive house I couldn’t afford. Then I had to pay for a big move into storage, three months of hotel living expenses, a move out of storage and into a new house, and the costs of getting settled into a house. Then there’s the trick of learning how to live on an entirely different, and drastically reduced, income and budget. I am just now figuring it out, but let’s just say it’s been a long year filled with tearful nights in front of my laptop with my bank page up, trying to figure out how to get everything paid with money I don’t, and won’t, have. It’s a problem I was lucky enough to never face, until now. In my old life, I never really had to say ‘no’ to my kids when they wanted something. Now I say ‘no’ every time we are in a store. I hoard gift cards and Christmas and birthday money for times when I really want to go shopping for myself because otherwise, I just don’t feel right about spending money on myself when I know it can go toward something the kids need or debt. I am starting to climb out of it and learn to manage with what I have, but it’s been a year-long lesson in reality for sure. I say a prayer of thanks every day for my job. I am beyond blessed to have it because it’s something I love and am passionate about, but it’s also what enables me and my girls to live in a nice house and have “enough.” The good news here is that I’m able to teach my kids about what truly is “enough.” The way we lived before wasn’t an example on the most fiscally responsible way to live. We’re going to make it, for sure. But it’s not going to be without struggles. Then again, such is life for a single mother. So financial health? Poor, but on the mend.

            And then we’re back to me. All of the stress and unhealthy living took its toll on me physically. In one year, I gained 15 pounds. I just ignored it for the longest time and decided that I didn’t care, anyway, because who was I trying to impress? I quit working out, which is something I really started to enjoy right before I moved. We got in the habit of eating out all the time, which certainly didn’t help matters. My anti-depressants were affecting my weight, too. I just felt tired and sluggish all the time. A few months ago, a friend put me in touch with a great alternative medicine doctor who ran a series of blood tests. He found the reasons for my issues and got me on the right track. I’m off of anti-depressants and on my way to losing 10 pounds in about a month already. I have more energy, and I just feel good in general. I’m eating better and have more energy for my kids. It’s kind of like a jump-start to getting back on track. Personal progress? Much, much better.

            Ah, and then there’s the single life. I don’t really consider myself single because I have kids. You can’t really live a “single” life when you’re carpooling, helping with homework each night, vacuuming goldfish out of booster seats, and signing up to be “mom for whatever they ask you to be mom for because you have severe divorce guilt.”  However, now and then, the girls are with their father, and I have something that has been very foreign to me since 2001—free time. I’m the first to admit that a lot of that free time is spent working, getting stuff done around the house, or just simply NAPPING. But, on occasion, I’ve dated. These are some of the highlights – wait, low lights -- of dating in the life of a single mom. Get ready to laugh, cry, or both. I surely have.

Back to the Well. You know the saying, “You can’t go home again?” Well, in my case, I found this to be true on several occasions. The easiest thing to do post-divorce/early dating life is to look up the old boyfriends. Social media has made this easier than ever before with Facebook and MySpace. Calling information for every number for your junior/senior banquet date in the greater metro area is no longer necessary—just facebook them. The best part is seeing “single” on his status because that means opportunity. It all starts innocently enough with the exchange of “hi, how are you, how have you been for 20 years, how are your kids, your dog, your job, your mistress, your geraniums, etc.” You do that for about a week, and then the “remember when’s” start to fly. Then you exchange numbers. Phone calls and texts lead to the first meeting, and then you have to marvel at how you ever lost touch.

            Well, there’s probably a reason you lost touch. You just had a lot happen in the past 20 years to help you forget. Eventually, you figure it out. I did. One old flame was single, but in love with someone he couldn’t have. Still is. It became clear I was just his entertainment until he could have her. Pass. Another wound up joining match.com during our courtship. When I discovered his new attempt at dating while dating me, I noticed that one of his profile pictures was of us on a date. Yep. True story. Couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.

The Nutty Professor. So after realizing that I’m going to come up with a dry bucket after going back to the well twice, I decide to join the zombie divorced masses looking for a date and try e-harmony. I mean, hell, it worked for the guy I was last dating, right? I make it through the questions that mimic a really bad job interview to wind up with a professor who “loves sports and all athletic endeavors.” I should’ve known right then and there that e-harmony is really bad at what it claims to do – match interests – because nowhere do I mention “athletic” in my answers. Maybe it missed the word “avoid” in front of it. So I meet him at a local Mexican food restaurant for our first “date.” He orders us both waters. It’s dinner time, and I’m really hungry. I can’t help but eye all of the dinners at the table around me. Chips! Finally! We get chips! And then I start to realize mid-conversation that we are drinking water and eating free chips and salsa because he’s trying to decide if I’m worthy to spend money on. I guess I pass the first phase of the test because I get to order a blue margarita. He makes fun of me for ordering a blue margarita, asking if it will turn my tongue blue. Dork Clue No. 1. The conversation lags, and I do my best to make jokes and keep things light. He slams his beer and asks for the check. I guess I didn’t make it to round 2—dinner. He looks at the check and says, “Ok, so you’re margarita was $7 so I guess I can get the tip since I just had a beer.” I drop a $20 and tell him not to worry about it. He doesn’t argue. We head out to the parking lot where he says, “thanks” and walks to his car, leaving me to walk to my car alone. I laugh the whole way back. The next day, my inbox contains an email with a nicely formatted bulleted list of why he needs to close the match. It’s a list of the things he found wrong with the evening and with me. The top of the list is a comment, “You’re too lighthearted and make too many jokes. I want to be in a serious relationship with someone who can get into serious discussions with me and not be afraid of her feelings.”

            The only feeling I had that night was that I could have used another blue margarita. But the email was a nice re-cap of why I suck, very nicely detailed and spaced out with a jolly choice of zapf dingbats. And that was The Nutty Professor.

The Nutty Divorced Dad. The Nutty Divorced Professor should have been my first clue that e-harmony is a dangerous, dangerous place worthy of extreme caution and fear. But for whatever reason, during this stage post-divorce, I felt like I should go on dates with new people. Maybe it was fear of having to go back to the well again. I was determined to meet someone new. So I went back to my pool of matches and clicked on a guy who seemed like a great father to two daughters with you’re all around boy-next-door, aw shucks look who just got handed a bum deal in a divorce he didn’t really want from an ex-wife who some suspected was actually a lesbian. (Say it with me….awwww….) In the very short time I “dated” NDD I noticed red flags at every turn. This is a guy who wanted a girlfriend—bad. Correction, he wanted a wife. He wanted a do-over. He wanted to go back to “everything is normal-see we have a house-we go to church-we eat at Chili’s after church-look at my yard.” Everything was overboard, too much, too soon. At times, I was truly fearful. But on paper, he is probably what I should have wanted. But see, there’s something about being married twice and the term “should.” You know better than to make another mistake and you know better than to be with someone when you have to use the word “should.” So I started backing out, ever so slowly. When he began booking my own, personal babysitter for dates before I even knew we had one and started giving me gifts that were far beyond where we were in the progression of our short period of dating, I knew I had to get out of this gig. When I mentioned to him in a text rant (he loved the text rant) that I, in fact, was NOT his girlfriend I was met promptly with “like it or not, you ARE my girlfriend.” Ok…put the knife down….back away slowly…and no one will get hurt here….. I admit, I was a little scared. I quickly learned that when a divorced dad who doesn’t want to be divorced and really, really, really wants you to be his girlfriend doesn’t get his way, he attacks in emails, and rather viciously I might add. A sampling:

“I don't do things for attention. News Flash bulletin - if that was the case I would have never gone out with you. Your blog screams "look at me".” 

“You are a shallow, self-absorbed, bitter woman who hates men. I find it funny that you accuse me of gossip yet you have made a career out of it.”

“You should filter out all people - all you need is your collection of shoes and your self-hating blog.”

“You were always dramatic by pulling the "mommy" card which you did quite a lot”

“My neighbors are always trying to hook me up.  I dated several women prior to you who make more and have lots of time than you do”

…and my favorite….. ““And don't worry - I will get a different bike route.” (C’mon, ya gotta laugh).

But before you think it’s all been a loss, it hasn’t….. There have been good moments, good memories, and good dates. And as of late, I can safely say better than good. I think the key to dating post-divorce is the key to dating in general….You gotta kiss a lot of frogs to get to the prince. And I still believe in happy endings, even after all I’ve been through. I still believe in the tried and true advice that you’ll find someone when you’re not looking, but when someone else is looking out for you. It works. J

I recently picked up perhaps the best of the many books I’ve read on divorce this year, “How to Sleep Alone in a King-Size Bed.” At times, I thought this was someone who was watching my life, journaling it, and then publishing it as her own because the similarities were stunning. As it turns out, we’re simply moms and writers who are divorced and have shared the same ups and downs. Worse, we are blamed for our divorces because we’re the ones who asked for them. We struggle with the unfair reality that, in the end, it doesn’t matter about all the things that led up to the divorce. It’s almost as if those actions and situations are erased once the papers are delivered. It’s all about who had them delivered. What matters is who cut the last shred of tape that was holding it all together. That’s the person to blame. That happened to be us. We’re the only ones who know what really happened pre-filing, but we’re also the ones who have to live with the day in, day out guilt and stress about the choice we ultimately had to make. Theo Pauline Nestor just happened to get her book out before I did. (Yes, that’s a hint.) These are some key passages from the amazing author who touched me so much, I had to share, because they tell my story, too. And to a degree, explain it better than I’ve been able to…yet.

“The final stage (of divorce) is acceptance and growth in which there is a releasing of the past. Life slows to a less chaotic pace, and there is a feeling of comfort and belonging in one’s new life. The person begins to trust again to take reasonable risks and make solid choices. There is a letting go of anger and an ability to be friendly with the ex. In all phases of her life, the divorcee’ has moved ahead.”

“I will never again be the person who married the father of my children. I will never again be a woman married to the man to whom I said “I do.” I might recover a great deal of the brightness of my life, but I’m not going to come out of this the same person who went into the marriage and then divorce. I’m not sure who she’s going to be –this person who’s going to rise like a phoenix above the smoldering embers of her old life. I just want to make sure I’m going to like her.”

“Take care of yourself. No one else is going to do that for you anymore.”

“Maybe it’s the small things that change who we are. It’s those deceptively small things – the act of watching TV alone is a basement suite, the phone call from a friend at just the right moment, the smell of wood burning on a cold night - that transform us at a cellular level. Maybe it’s always something small that takes us from hope to despair. Maybe it’s something small, too, that takes us all the way back.”

“It seems it’s taking forever for my ex to realize that I am no longer an extension of him and longer for me to believe it. I feel like a disobedient arm or foot.”

“We meet people and 15 minutes later we figure we know who they are, but then we can spend a lifetime with a person and realize we still don’t completely know them.”

“Maybe this is what love is, after all…knowing who the person is and reaching for them when you know they can’t reach for you, going to find them when they are locked up inside themselves, even if you might be hurting or afraid yourself. Maybe this is why couples are breaking up everywhere…because we can’t talk each other down from our towers.”

“I can’t expect to save my children from hurt or from the fact that the parents are divorced. I can’t always make them happy. The hand-offs are tense. Christmas will probably always be a series of tricky compromises—two trees, presents shuttled between houses. Someday, mom might slow-dance in the living room someone who is not their father. Even if all of this is true, I can still be an okay mom, or even a good mom. Maybe, just maybe, because all these things are true and I am no longer going to pretend they aren’t, I can finally be both a mother and myself.”

…And back to the year in review. It’s been a beautiful disaster in many ways. We still struggle, almost every day. Some days, my ex-spouse and I run this co-parenting gig like a successful business. Dare I say we communicate even better? There are moments we have it down, and the girls seem completely adjusted and fine with The New Life. Then other days, I am screaming at him louder and meaner than I ever did in marriage, and he thrives on reminding me at how I failed the children and how I have ruined his life. I look at his life, and by appearances, it doesn’t seem ruined at all. In fact, he seems and looks happier than I remember him since college. I get frustrated because for someone who continually claims his children were “torn” from him, it seems our biggest struggle is getting “balanced” parenting time. He will always get to wear the “victim” badge post divorce and get the “I need to find myself” break, and I need to make peace with this. The kids still want to be with him and maintain their huge crush on their daddy, and I choose to believe that he will continue to do the right things for them. I will never abandon my promise to make sure I facilitate their relationship the best I can and to never speak ill about their father in front of them, ever. And I say this in all honesty, I want the best for him. I hope he can fill in the voids I couldn't, and that his final destination is nothing but happiness where he can honestly say, "this is better."

 What I know to be true will have to be enough for me, and most days it is. But then there are days when I can barely tolerate looking at myself in the mirror for the choice I had to make…almost by force. I choose to believe it will get better in time, especially now that he has moved on and is making a new life for himself that will ultimately include a “second” family. Maybe that will help him forget how much he hates me. I hope so. Maybe I can, too, move past what made me unable to continue in the life we tried to build, but outside of the children, should probably have never attempted.

So the year in review…..Despite all of this…everything since the first divorce…I’m still not jaded. I’m still not bitter. I’m not even mad. Surprisingly, I’m still hopeful. And despite the rough patches with the kids, the gnawing guilt, the broken down car, the bills that pile up, the tears, the days I can’t even imagine getting out of bed, and the painful struggles of being a single mom, I’m happy. Yes, I typed the word. I’ve said it….happy. And I’m not just saying this in order to make myself believe it. And I got here on my own terms. I’ve tried it on, and it fits. Happy…I like it.