on divorce... again, the second time around.

So. I got news earlier this week that my divorce petition had been heard before the BC courts, and granted. Final Order was signed December 10th, 2013. Divorce will be official and complete effective January 9th, 2014.

Three weeks shy of a total nine years separated.

Nine years.

Is hard to believe. There are days I wonder if that time, that marriage - that relationship, period - even actually existed in my world. It seems a dream to me now. I've been separated from my ex-spouse longer than I was with him in entirety. It took eight years to meet, fall in love, cohabitate, get married, and come crashing down and blow apart to smithereens.

I was left shattered, a shell, devastated, cast adrift and uncertain about anything in life. Then again, it's not like I didn't see it coming, either. I did. I saw frayed edges of rationale and justification and deliberation and desperation. The emotions were high... passions burned, scruples froze, judgments fell. I chose to ignore the catastrophic disintegration of our bond from the inside-out.

We flamed immediate-hot like a shooting star, blazing a trail for ourselves in relationship and life. And like a shooting star we trailed quickly away to celestial dust - in a blink. Gone. It was doomed from the get-go; it couldn't have survived. It wasn't meant to... and I knew that.

We served a purpose at a specific point in our lives, though, each to the other. We couldn't have come through our separate personal grief that had us each cloaked when we first met without the other to lean on. We were each other's emancipation from those shackles of grief and desolation and we plundered each other's marrow and core; what we had, what we shared, what we consumed of each other... when we went our separate ways, it left me laying blind at a crossroads, bereft and faithless.

And, then.

And, then I rose up. Eviscerated.

I went and found all the pieces of me. It took almost nine years.

Being/having a catylst experience exacts a deep an abiding cost to the soul. It has to be that way, or life's a shallow ditch.

*******

Free-agent celebrations will transpire at some point. Indeed. Some might find such pointless, or sacrilege, or disdainful. So be it. For me, it is not so much celebrating the receipt of the divorce as it is the gift of new beginnings. The shackles and shortcomings of the past (and my contribution to all of it) can now be laid to rest in permanency. Heart and soul is done with the business of it all. Time to move on...

I've much to be thankful for, including the pain of my past. It, too, has been a gift of priceless calibre; we are not who we come to be without the trials and tribulations that make the path of our personal journeys. I like the me that I have come to be.

Girl's done alright for herself.

And life is.