on divorce
who am i now? what am i even feeling? lessons learned?... this is a long one...
Well… Statistically, this comes as no shock, but emotionally this shit is insane.
Five years of love and it’s just… over.
When he ended our relationship, he stressed that we were fundamentally wrong for each other. I was nothing like what he wanted. He was not the one for me. When it happened, I wanted to argue with him.
And I did.
I argued how he fucked me over by not coming to me sooner with his issues, by not clarifying his needs when he saw me misunderstanding them. I monologued about how I showed up for him exactly the way he asked me to, and that still wasn’t enough.
He rebutted with how the affection I gave him was too restrained. Not spontaneous enough, not considerate or proactive enough. And the sex. Let’s just say, I’m not nearly as invested in sexual pleasure as he is. We went back and forth about chicken or the egg—who started pulling away first. Whose fault is it really. Who was the root and who was reacting.
It’s a bit pointless, really, to argue about which came first. The fact is, it happened. He felt like he couldn’t talk to me. I felt like he didn’t like me. But… for some reason… I thought we were working. I thought the arguments, few and far between, were simply seasons and cycles of marriage.
Proof that love is work and requires constant growth.
I see it now, though. Who I am… my love language, my style of affection, my sex drive… all of it is fundamentally in opposition to him and his needs. The effort that I put in was not enough, nor in the style that made him feel seen validated.
The love he told me was unconditional was very much not. It was dependent on sex, on being a homemaker and not asking him to participate in the housework, on giving one specific form of affection.
Dependent on being a totally different person.
It’s amazing how “getting along” can reflect a future, even mimic unconditional love.
The little girl in me, the one still healing from childhood trauma of abuse and neglect is being rubbed raw from discovering that who I am… everything that I am… was not loved wholly. That so many parts of me were resented and unwanted.
The best way I can describe it is this: Picture a scar. Something I barely glanced at. No longer hurt, but it served as a reminder of the deep cuts. In a way, it was a scar I was almost proud of. I healed. My body repaired itself. It didn’t hurt anymore.
But somewhere an infection was festering. I had no clue it was there. There were no symptoms, at least none that I couldn’t dismiss as fluke pains and oddities. Yet, it was growing and creeping into the rest of my body like a cancer. And one day, the seam of my scar split. It wasn’t a slow split that stung, dribbled a bit of blood and you quickly patched up.
No, it exploded.
Blood spray everywhere.
Crumple to the floor and cry silently because the pain takes your ability to speak and scream. It takes your ability to ask for help.
And even if you could ask for help, you wouldn’t get what you needed because you just lost your health insurance.
So you lay there, writhing on the bathroom floor, waiting to either pass out and die, or gather enough strength to stand back up and stitch yourself together again.
Because no one else will do it for you.
Everything hurts. He loves someone else. They’re already together, less than 24 hours after we were through… and I’m watching their relationship happen, right in front of me. Hearing every other word of praise and affection, just a door down from me. I won’t go into the details of everything that’s gone down, nor drag his or her name through the mud. This isn’t really about them.
This is about the open, festering, and gushing wound left behind.
This is about me getting divorced.
…I’m getting divorced…
I’m getting divorced???
What the fuck.
To say that there are no hard feelings would be a complete and utter lie, but I also can’t say I’m not the tiniest bit relieved.
The man I fell in love with hadn’t been present in the relationship for a while. I knew that. He knew that. Seeing him struggle with life, generally, and being completely and utterly unable to help him in a way that felt meaningful to him was hurting us both. He kept me at arms length, and I responded by allowing it.
To be honest, I’m not entirely sure if I pushed him away, too, or was reciprocating the energy given to me. To be even more honest, I’m not sure it fucking matters. What’s done is done.
I deeply want the best for him, though I still really hope it’s not with her, simply because of how it all went down. However, seeing the man I once knew starting to resurface—no longer drowning under the weight of life, job, and me—I fear that she is better for him. I haven’t seen him this stress-free in a long time.
Knowing it’s because of a totally different person, though, is like hot coals in my lungs.
Knowing that he could only love someone who wasn’t me… even worse that he clung to hope I would become that person? I might as well be swallowing shards of molten glass.
And it’s forcing me to reflect on who I am in a relationship. He told me he didn’t hate me, but hated who I am in a relationship. He hated the relationship itself, not the person.
It doesn’t feel that way, yet.
Am I avoiding accountability if it’s easier to say he hated me? What responsibility do I need to take? What was my role in the relationship? This part confuses me. I know I was wrong for him. I am aware and accepting of the fact that I didn’t want to have as much sex, nor the kind of sex he wanted. I am aware that my form of affection was not physical or gentle enough for him. I am aware that I didn’t proactively demonstrate or disclose how much he means… meant (?)… to me often enough.
Yet, I am selfishly giving myself grace for these things, because I genuinely didn’t know he wanted and needed them. But, I was also too dense to put 2 and 2 together. So what should I be doing? How should I be feeling? Should I be on my knees begging? Sobbing and paralyzed in bed? Should I feel like shit for not knowing and not trying harder to do better?
It’s even strange to write about it all. How many details do I divulge? How much is too much about him and his personal life, even when it is mine, too?
At the moment, I think I mostly just feel… nothing. Everything is a bit insane. From how it went down, to the fact that it happened at all. It’s amazing how fast dreams fall. I’m having to imagine my future without the one person I thought would be there. I know he will continue to chase his dreams. But what the hell are mine, now?
I don’t think I can picture that far ahead because… Gods. I’m getting divorced. I’m 24, a year away from my doctorate degree, and I’m getting divorced. How the hell did I speed-run adulthood? How did I end up where people usually end up in their 30s and onward?
It’s odd being here, because through it all, I keep expecting?… hoping? that he’ll just kiss me again. Like the weight of all our old love and time together will pull him back to me for just a single moment, and the laughing and the memories will make him want to hold me again. I know it’s silly, and it would be disloyal and dishonest to his new girlfriend — though it would make me very smug — but there’s a type of gentle he is capable of that I want a glimpse of. Just one more time.
But it’ll always be one more, one more, one more.
I don’t want him back. I want a moment. I want a security and safety with him that I haven’t felt in a while.
I don’t want sex. I want a gentle kiss. I want to be held by him. One more time. And then, somehow, to go about as friends. But hearing him tell her that he loves her, wants her, and thinks she’s beautiful is painful. It’s devastating. Hearing him call her baby, honey, sweetheart… It’s like being stabbed in the gut, and he’s twisting the knife.
As much as I am okay with the relationship being done, I just want to feel like I still have even the smallest fraction of what I once had. What he’s giving to her. Just one. more. time. I want to feel like the distance between us never existed. I want the nails that stab into my heart with every pump to disintegrate.
Yet, at the same time, I wish I felt more strongly about it all. I know these pains are there. I know I’m feeling them. But, at the same time, I can’t feel them. I haven’t broken down yet. I haven’t collapsed to my knees and cursed at the world.
I don’t think I can.
I have shit to do.
I have a degree to earn.
So, I’ve caught this kernel of hope, and I’ve trapped it like a fairy. Waiting for it to sprinkle its dust on me and let me fly. Shaking the damn cage and hoping it finally gives itself to me. Because then, and only then, will I have evidence for myself that I am better off without him.
I dream of hot girl summers, kissing the wrong people, and getting hit on by strangers I’ll never see again.
I yearn for the freedom to live untethered, unbothered, and independently.
I ache for the version of me that scares men, allures women, and makes everyone envious.
I even wait for the grief. Will I ever be fully moved on if I don’t implode just once? When will it hit me, if at all? Was the sigh of relief greater than the grief of moving on?
And dear gods, how will I love again?
The concept of being loved, unconditionally, wholly, and wholeheartedly feels… out of reach. Every now and then, I’ll be scrolling on instagram and get recommended a video he commented under. He almost always commented on reels about marriage or dating, and would always praise “his wife” under them. It happened again today, where I found a comment from 5 weeks ago, where he praised me for giving him back scratches and holding him while he napped after a bad day.
5 weeks ago was about 1 or 2 weeks before he broke things off.
Unconditional love my ass.
It’s weird seeing evidence of us littered everywhere, including within intangible spaces. Electronic love letters he never sent to me, but declared for the whole world anyway.
Yet, I doubt their truth. I doubt his affections.
How much of it was show? Am I part of the goddamn circus?
When I told friends and coworkers, their flabbers were ghasted. They told me to hit him with my car. Beat a bitch up… People even cried for me. This was the man who obsessed over me. The same man that praised me in public and in private. The same man who made it so explicitly clear he was in love with me.
How could that man, and this one, be one in the same?
How can the one who held me as I ugly sobbed through pain and trauma, the one who participated in my spirituality so I felt as though he was safe, the one who withstood nasty words from my grandmother just to support me when I argued with her about my name… How can that man be done?
How can that man say he hasn’t loved me for a long time?
I hate him.
I don’t hate him.
I want him to come back.
I hope I move on.
I miss him.
Fuck him.
I wish he would hold me.
If he touched me again I would feel violated.
What if he made a mistake?
Why would anyone who ever truly cared do me so dirty?
Could we work this out?
Jesus Christ he fucked up too spectacularly for me to ever forgive him.
I wish I was sobbing.
I’ll never waste tears over a person—let alone a man—like that.
I wish this hurt more.
I feel like I might die.
I want to say that I truly understand and have learned that I need to add variety to how I express affection, and to be more interpretive in my communication style — he always said I was too literal and did only what was explicitly asked of me and never anything more. But I don’t think I truly understand those things yet, or at least not accept them fully. Mostly the communication bit. I ask people for exactly what I want and need, and when they do that I feel like they’ve shown up for me and care. So, I always strive to do exactly what I’m asked. I get that I could’ve been more proactive and broad in my approach to “increasing affection”, but I struggle with this because affection means very different things to people.
I need someone to show up exactly as I’ve asked them to. He asked me for a specific type of affection, I gave that, but he actually wanted much more. Me being confused and seeking clarity was exhausting for him. The funny part is, I get that. Being asked to clarify everything can be draining. I was so focused on not fucking it up that I got too specific and not creative enough.
At the same time, though, if you know I’ll do what I’m asked, just ask me for it. If you see I’m struggling to understand your needs, tell me and approach the conversation from a different way. I desperately wanted to be there, but I just… wasn’t.
So while I do know how things went wrong on my end, how I wasn’t the right person for him, I still don’t understand how I was never given the chance to be the right person. And how it all went down leaves such a sour taste in my mouth that it feels easier to say he simply never really loved me. It’s easier to accept that he was waiting for something more convenient and easy to come along.
Through it all, I wonder what pieces of me are because of him. I wonder what sayings and mannerisms will surface throughout daily life, reminding me that there was a time in my life where he was my best friend. Will anyone ever read my face and my mind as well as he does?
When the plane takes off and when it lands, who will I send those photos to?
When the cats do something insane, who will laugh about it with me?
Is he going to do our Christmas traditions with her? Will they feel just as special, or —fuck — more special, without me in those memories?
What jokes of mine does he make with her?
How did I go from being the funniest, most beautiful, and smartest person he knew to someone he doesn’t want in his life? How did I get replaced so quickly?
Was it a replacement, or an upgrade?
Which is worse?
And what the fucking fuck do I tell my family?
The aftermath of divorce is like that of a tsunami. Everything that once stood beautiful and tall is littered remains on a broken street. Everything changes. Everything is devastated.
And if you’re lucky enough to survive, if you’ve bobbed above water long enough to prevent drowning and swallowed just enough sea water that your lungs still function, you get to walk through the wreckage and wonder how anything rebuilt will be as beautiful as it was before.
The only thing I can see in the wreckage is myself.
Cuts everywhere. Scars forming. Dried blood on my knees. The sound of wet hacking as the memories of nearly drowning escape my lungs. Perhaps I’m not done drowning…
I see myself but I don’t recognize me. I lie to myself in the mirror.
That’s you, Sawyer.
That’s me.
But the person I am now is so fundamentally altered that it can’t be the same one I was looking at, just a month ago.
That Sawyer had a wide smile. The light slowly returning to their eyes with the hope that 2026 would be the best year yet. That Sawyer had lighter shoulders, and an eagerness to care for themselves. That Sawyer was excited for summer and sun, because it meant sharing a million more moments with the ones they loved.
The smile in my mirror now is… alien. It’s real, but so distantly removed from reality. This one is made from disbelief and insanity. This one is a persona, excited for a future of freedom.
It doesn’t quite seem to reach the eyes, anymore.
The body moves like a 20 something, soaking up all the rays of sun and fun it can. Shaking ass as if the trauma is stored in the hips, and not in the heart. Singing as if the noise will drown out the pain. Smoking more than it ever has, because lungs full of smoke are better than those with water.
Because I’d rather choke on my own choices than someone else’s.
Yet, at the same time, the person in the mirror is completely recognizable. The body has aged imperceptibly. But it’s noticeably heavier. Sluggish.
This is me in auto-pilot. This is me picking up as many pieces as possible, my head held high, before I go stomping around and making my feet bleed. This is the me that survived 19 years before him.
I recognize this me. She just has a few more crows feet. More stern cheekbones.
I recognize this me. The bags under their eyes seem a little deeper than before. Just a little more tired than before.
I recognize this me. This person has the same face as every iteration of herself. They have the same nose, and lips, and eyes. They have the same laugh.
But I don’t feel like this is me.
Five years.
Five years.
Five years.
Here’s to 70 more.
in love and longing,
<3 sj
I love you, this is just the start to your next chapter 🫶🏾
I HAVE AND ALWAYS WILL BELIEVE IN YOU.