Hello August!

This is going to be a good month.  I can feeeeel it.

It's been almost a year since I've been physically separated from Ex-Hubs.  Emotionally and financially we had been separated for awhile.  But at the end of August, the process of moving out and on had officially started.

I look back on the last 8 years and it gets foggy in my brain.

I sometimes can't believe I was married for 5 years.  Ages: 22-27.

That relationship took up so many years of my life.

I was so very lost and confused - didn't know how to be assertive and just did things because I was "supposed" to do them.

Lessons Learned:

If he wasn't Prince Charming when you were dating, he won't be Prince Charming once you're married.

See also: You can't change people.  They are, who they are, [who they are], and that's them.

I got excited about getting married not because I understood the act itself, but because I was in love with the idea of a big wedding and then a big house with a yard and a fairy tale husband! 

BUT! I was never the little girl that dreamed about that stuff!  

I said I was never going to get married.  

Didn't believe in it.

Just a piece of paper.

The planning and paying of the wedding was horrendous.

I had no friends supporting me, let alone anyone for a wedding party.

My mom basically robbed my dad to pay for it.

Ex's dad was supposed to pay for his share, but ya know, he was in jail, so...

I was 22 years old and dumb! Just like all the other girls that age that got married and are now already divorced or in the process of.  

Looking back on the wedding itself, I was in love, but I didn't want to walk down the aisle that day for so many reasons.

However, I did.  I didn't feel I could say no because it was expensive and paid for.

My mom would have killed me!  How embarrassing it would be! 

Call OFF a wedding?! 

Taboo.

[I say that now, trying so hard to get divorced, to take my mom's advice - "Get out while you can.  Don't end up like me!", while having NO relationship with her at all because she's a psychopath.  

Hindsight 2020: Shoulda Called It Off!]

And the wedding itself was nice and the reception was fun and pretty (as it should have been for what we paid for it) but I got shitfaced and so did Ex and my wedding night was really me passing out at the Holiday Inn "Suite" above the club/bar while my alcoholic husband was getting even drunker downstairs with the rest of his drunkard family.

And I still stuck with this path, the beginning... this foundation that my life was being built on.

It got better and sometimes awesome and it got worse and sometimes violent.  My life has been really fucking hard for a really fucking long time and I just want to be divorced and move on.  I can honestly say I gave that relationship my all, but it started out wrong and should have never even gotten to the level it did.  Not many hard feelings, as I learned a lot.  He's much better off, too, and I honestly wish him well.

I have been told I am to 'grieve the loss of my old life' - the good, bad and ugly.

There is so much I have to go through and process.

I'll probably revisit this and add to it, but for now, that felt like a weight lifted off me. 

So long have I wanted to say it, type it, make it tangible.

Maybe I'll compile all this together for my memoir.

I don't want to open up the Pandora's box of my childhood and start there.

Can one start a memoir at 13yo/the high school years?

I guess I could be the first...

But like I said, August is going to be a good month.  I can feel it.