Motivational Monday: Shake it Out

There was a day when I walked out of a courthouse with my ex-husband, and we thanked each other for the years and the children, and went our separate ways, and on the way home I played this song, with the sweet sadness of leaving him, the highway stretching before me, the future and the past, the tears running down my cheeks.

And I am done with my graceless heart
So tonight I’m gonna cut it out and then restart

Some day I will explain the whole divorce, because I think it’s another subject that women have the right to hear about. The secretly unhappy wife. The wife who is unhappy for no apparent reason. Whose husband is wonderful, who is well provided for, what the fuck is her problem?

And it’s hard to dance with a devil on your back
And given half the chance would I take any of it back
It’s a fine romance but it’s left me so undone
It’s always darkest before the dawn

And it’s not like he was a devil, but living a secret life is. For everybody.

You weigh the many cons, your children will never forgive you, everyone will be so disappointed, with benefits that are not even certain, your children will know a mother who was deeply happy… I truly felt that it was a disservice to my girls to stay in a marriage where I was uninterested, at the same time knowing it was a disservice to leave. Trying to see the future, trying to find the right path. Never sleeping and always wanting. Feeling like the life I was supposed to have would never be mine.

In the end I just did it. It just burst from my mouth without me preparing. Nothing brave in that, but it got the ball rolling.

And I’m damned if I do and I’m damned if I don’t
So here’s to drinks in the dark at the end of my road
And I’m ready to suffer and I’m ready to hope
It’s a shot in the dark aimed right at my throat

I leapt you see. And you know what? It all worked out. And everyone I thought would abandon me, didn’t. And my children did forgive me, and they seem somehow better for it. All those fears of being the fallen woman, the scandalized mother, it was all for naught. And today I am loved so perfectly, so passionately, so exactly the way I need, that running away is no longer a fantasy. My real life is the fantasy.

So just know that sometimes your unpopular choice, when driven by your heart, is the right one.

…Well what the hell… I’m gonna let it happen to me, yeah