Mia L. Hazlett
After 7 years of separation and battling the courts for a simple court date, my storm ended last week. While our eighteen year relationship will continue, our twelve year marriage came to an end.
Throughout the years of our separation it has been a constant emotional storm for me. I’m not the person who stays friends with the ex. It’s not who I am. If we’re over, we’re over. I have enough friends in my life; I don’t need to start adding exes to that list.
But this guy. I’m stuck with this guy. We have two beautiful daughters together and every Sunday for a few hours, he shows up. For birthday parties and Christmas, he’s there. That’s how co-parenting works. That’s how the love for our children works. And we do love our children. Because we love them, we even attempted reconciliation for a few months here and there. But I realized I had moved on in my life. God was moving me forwards, not backwards.
The misconception that many people have is that divorce is easy. It’s not. Even though we’ve had years of separation, we’ve also been a part of each others’ lives for almost two decades. I get it; there are a massive amount of couples who have to have a strict court order in able to function through the parenting aspect of the relationship.
We didn’t want a court to dictate the relationship with our children or with each other for that matter. We sat next to each other laughing and joking in the courtroom. We battled emotions and discussed not going through with it, but I thought God finally put me here after 7 years. We stood outside for an hour after being evacuated for a bomb scare. We both shared the same feeling, “maybe this is a sign.”
It wasn’t. We returned to the courtroom and our 12 years ended in less than 10 minutes. It was heartbreaking, and I allowed my heart to break for a week. But then I shut down the pity party and began making plans for THE OTHER SIDE.
© 2016 Mia L. Hazlett