Divorce Shoes

 Yup.  I said it. Outloud.

Two of my favorite people in the world went through it and I'll be honest, I didn't get it.  And I don't think anyone ever does until they're standing in the divorce shoes.  They're not your size.    They're not your style. They hurt.  You can't imagine going anywhere in them because they are NOT YOU.

But divorce is different than shoes.  Shoes you get to take off and if you REALLY want to, you can toss them.  But divorce...you don't have that option.  It's like they're the ONLY shoes that are available for you and if you want to move forward, ya gotta put them on.

So, you do.  Because you don't have a choice.  If you're smart, you find a way to break them in S-L-O-W-L-Y, when every fiber in your being tells you to run , to get as far away from where you are because being where you are hurts.  The thing is, it's not where you are that hurts.  It's the damned shoes.  It's the proverbial rock/hard place, damned if you do/damned if you don't scenario.   But standing still is not an option. 

I technically wasn't divorced when I started moving and that was probably good, given the divorce took over a year.  I decided to take my oldest daughter to northern Wisconsin for a "girls get away".  Weirdly, it was something I never considered, because any time during my marriage I attempted to do anything outside of my ex, he nixed it. (You eventually learn what this is and how to deal with what it has done to you...another post).  So we went to Madeline Island/Bayfield.  We went shopping in Bayfield where I found the prettiest wall arrangement of flowers outside of an antique store.  So I took a picture of them.  It wasn't just the colors, which were so vibrant, but it was also the texture.  The chipped brick wall, the painted peeling wooden boxes, the bright blue door frame. It wasn't one thing but all of it.

See where this is going?  We aren't one dimensional.  We have so many facets that can't be pigeon holed into one picture.  It's everything as a whole that makes us who we are.  For too long I had myself tied up in what I wasn't. I wasn't wanted. I wasn't enough.  I wasn't young. I wasn't skinny. I wasn't wealthy. I wasn't worthy.  I wasn't welcome.  The list of wasn'ts was pretty long. And I forgot that for each of those things I wasn't, I was/am something else.  I AM a great mom.  I AM a good friend.  I AM worthy of being something other than a doormat. I AM clever.  I AM resourceful.  I AM capable.  I AM courageous.  I AM adventurous.  And want to know the dirty little secret?  I always have been those things.  It just took a while to find me buried under all I was made to believe I wasn't.

I still have the divorce shoes.  Apparently, they're like a scar that you can't just slough off even though I would love to.  But as I've had to readjust my thinking so much, it shouldn't be a surprise that I've had to  with this as well.  Because sometimes...if you're honest, when you look at those shoes, ugly and painful as they are, you can see how far you've come in them and find that though the journey was exhausting, both mentally and physically, you're in a much better place. 

Here are those flowers.  They still make me smile.  Maybe you too?