The hardest part is over.

Photo attribution here.

Six months ago today I came home from work to a cold, empty, dark apartment where everything I had left that morning was in the exact same place that I'd left it. The stillness that had at first comforted me because of its stark contrast to the chaos that had overtaken my married life was then a resounding, deafening hollowness. Sitting at that silent kitchen table I tore open the notice from the courthouse. I stared at it for a few full minutes. Final. Eight short days after filing the paperwork my divorce was final. My face was like a garden hose with a few pinholes in it during those months. I hardly noticed when the tears were streaming out anymore. Two small, slow, uneven streams raced down my cheeks once again to see who could slip and splat down onto my chest first. I stood outside myself for a time and took a mental snap shot of that moment, then sighed and went straight to bed.

Those days I was like someone on the brink of dying of thirst who had fashioned herself a contraption of leaves to collect enough rain water to take a gulp, distancing herself from death.one moment at a time, one drop at a time, one gulp at a time. I didn't think I had it in me. If there had been an escape button I would have hit it. I would have cried "uncle", called in sick, lied my way out of it, quit, gotten a doctor's note, anything I could think of I would have done in an effort to excuse myself from the living hell that was collecting moments to test the hypothesis that "time heals all wounds". But that's the thing about healing up from tragedy. We can't go over it, we can't go under it, we can't go around it, we have to go through it.

To all those who are going through their own personal "it"s, know this: I wouldn't trade beautiful little ordinary old today for any given day of my married life. It does get better, drop by drop by drop.