There’s still a lot left to write about the after.
The weeks and months between that conversation and the day our divorce became official.
I know those stories are still waiting for me.
The funny thing is, I never sit down at my computer determined to write a particular chapter of my life. That’s never been how this blog works. More often than not, a memory quietly floats to the surface and demands my attention. I sit down, start writing, and follow the thread to wherever it leads. Sometimes I have no idea where I’m going until I’m already there.
I know there are still threads left to pull.
I’d also be lying if I said a part of me wasn’t dreading them.
Not because those memories are still painful, but because the woman who lived through those months isn’t someone I particularly enjoy spending time with.
She said things she wishes she hadn’t.
She reacted from hurt instead of understanding.
She let her own pain spill onto someone she loved.
But perhaps what is harder to revisit are the things she stopped saying altogether.
The warmth she withdrew.
The softness she replaced with distance.
The way she turned someone she had shared eleven years of life with into someone she communicated with only through logistics.
Reading those memories now fills me with a sadness that’s difficult to explain. Not because I think she was a bad person—she wasn’t. She was heartbroken. She was scared. She was grasping for certainty in a situation where none existed. But hurt people don’t always behave like the people they truly are. Sometimes they become so focused on protecting themselves that they don’t notice the ways that protection creates its own wounds.
It’s an uncomfortable thing to sit across from an older version of yourself, even when you’ve outgrown her. Even when you’ve changed. Even when you’ve done the work she didn’t yet know she needed to do. Because whether you like it or not, she’s still you.
Every now and then I catch a glimpse of her. It might be in the tone I use when I’m frustrated, in the way I respond before I’ve taken a breath, or in my instinct to control a situation before I’ve stopped to ask myself why. Those moments remind me that the work is never really done. Growth isn’t something you accomplish once and then carry with you forever. It’s a practice. It’s paying attention. It’s recognizing old patterns before they quietly become familiar roads again.
For a long time, I thought healing meant leaving that version of myself behind. I don’t believe that anymore. I don’t think we ever outrun who we once were. We carry every version of ourselves forward—the frightened ones, the reactive ones, the ones who loved well, and the ones who loved poorly. They’re all still there, woven into the person we’ve become.
The chapters I’ve already written have been the easiest to revisit because I know those stories. I know how they felt from my side. The ones that still stop me are the stories where I have to look at myself a little more honestly. The questions that find me now aren’t really about what happened to me. They’re about what my own hurt may have done to someone else.
I wonder about the moments where I was so consumed by my own heartbreak that I stopped seeing his. I wonder about the warmth I withdrew. The conversations I ended before they could begin. The ways I communicated that our marriage had become a business arrangement instead of acknowledging that, even though it was ending, it had still mattered.
That’s the difficult thing to admit. It would be easier to look back and say I was angry because I was hurt. And I was. But anger wasn’t the only thing I carried. I carried fear. I carried grief. I carried a need to protect myself so fiercely that I didn’t always recognize the person on the other side of that protection.
I’ll probably never know how those weeks felt from Mike’s side of the story. I’ll never know which conversations stayed with him or which ones he’s long forgotten. I’ll never know whether there were apologies either of us needed that never found their way into the room. There was a time when that uncertainty bothered me. I wanted answers. I wanted closure. Now I think some questions simply remain unanswered, and part of growing older has been learning to make peace with that.
Perhaps that’s the biggest difference between the woman writing these words and the woman who lived them. I see things now that she couldn’t possibly have seen then. I have language for patterns she didn’t yet recognize. I understand that two people can love each other deeply and still bring out the worst in one another. Most importantly, I understand that growth isn’t about distancing myself from who I used to be. It’s about being willing to sit beside her without turning away.
I don’t always like the woman I see in those memories.
But I understand her now.
That’s the closest thing to forgiveness there is.
-A
Leave a Reply