Ok team, I’ve been dealing with some feelings. I hadn’t planned to be writing about them, but I can’t seem to write about anything else right now.
So here it is: 9 years ago today I got married. Yup! August 9, 2008… I fell in love and married a great, weird, handsome guy. And today we would have been celebrating our 9th wedding anniversary.
But we’re not. We’re not because we’re divorced. After 8 years together, 4 of those years being married to each other, as we grew up and changed as people, we were no longer serving as positive sources of energy for the other.
Moi as a young bride in 2008
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In our early 20s among our different friend groups, we were the first couple to get engaged. The first couple in buy a house. The first to host dinner parties, themed parties, and BBQs. The first to throw a wedding. And the first to get divorced.
It’s been 5 years since we divided up our assets and dissolved our marriage. And in that time, everyone among the friend circle I kept around me have now ALL paired off, moving far far away into their first homes and becoming pregnant with their first (or second) child. While were all in our thirties, I feel like this weird alien among friends who I no longer recognize.
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Canada Long Weekend was spent on my balcony watching fireworks and drinking with this couple-friend of ours who got married exactly one month before we did. They’re still together, happily supportive of each other and are proud parents to a gorgeous little boy. Funnily enough, this couple started as a work friend of my ex’s. But it turns out they’ve only kept in touch with me regularly all this time. ❤
As happenstance would have it, one of them bumped into my ex on the streets of Toronto a few days before our hang out…so you know they spilt all the tea with me!
Last summer, I heard through the grapevine that he’d gotten himself remarried. The big news uncovered for Canada150 was that he and his new wife are expecting their SECOND CHILD!!! 😮
This news was a shock. But I wasn’t sad or mad at finding out. I felt genuinely at peace knowing he’s been able to find someone to give him what he wanted in this life. The same feeling I have when I’m sitting as an attendee to a friend’s wedding or baby shower. I’m happy for them. Sincerely.
But then … later like this morning, waking up remembering its not-my-wedding-anniversary … there’s pangs of something that comes over me. Me… comparing their achievements with my own (or lack their of), taking away from what I’ve got going on in my life. 😦
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This long weekend was an oddly busy one for me. It was filled with friend groups on a wide spectrum:
Friday night with a unique Caribanna event specifically for the sex positive, open-minded Cis-Trans-Poly crowd of friends of friends for dancing, performances and late night eating.
Saturday I had brunch with 3 fellow “September Babies” who once were my go-to-hanging-out-and-shooting-the-shit-with peoples, but this year they’ve all found partners and hangouts of “just us” are few and far between.
Sunday I travelled all the way to Oakville to an annual backyard BBQ that has always been known for as boozy-palooza where things get weird….buuuuuut this year she’s preggers and the backyard was filled with more kids than adults.
I feel like this weird alien among friends who I no longer recognize.
It’s hard coming up with gratitude for all the good in your life when chronic pain and leg spasms cloud everything – my life these days. 😦 But I know I’m blessed.
I’m blessed to be able to spend all my disposable income on myself, the pup and the kids I’m a ‘courtesy aunty’ to. I’m blessed to have such diverse groups of people in my life – people I likely wouldn’t have found had I remained a married woman. I’m blessed that to own a bit of real estate in the city. I’m blessed that I have been able to travel to cool destinations and write about them. I’m blessed to be able to foster and rescue dogs. I’ve blessed to have a job where my employer supports short-term leave with pay. I’m blessed to have everything I need and more at my doorstep: groceries, restaurants, green spaces, beaches, transit, dance friends, live music and bars.
In these 5 years of not being married, it’s given me the room to have a variety of different experiences, to become comfortable with who I am as a person, and has helped me figure out what I want AND don’t want in a life partner. At the same time, I’ve come to the uncomfortable realization that I may not find myself a life partner, and that’s ok too. I’m still working on being ok with this last part. 🙂
Any one else able to relate to what I’ve been trying to say in the word vomit above? Gawd…I hope so. 🙂 Let me know what you think in the comment section…
Stay tuned every Monday and Wednesday for new content, plus throwback posts on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Hope I can count on you to join me then. ❤
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