when i chose “expand” for the word of the year…

…I did so expecting my life to do just that; expand and expand and grow and grow. And good lordy it has. With just over a quarter of the year left, my life just changed drastically, yet again. And I have been buried in paperwork, tears, grief, joy, happiness, and shame. It has felt like an entire gamut of emotions, none of which have been small or insignificant.

A week and a half ago, I finally pulled the plug on something I’ve been fighting for a year. I asked my spouse for a divorce. I told them that I couldn’t go any further, it was time to end what remained of our relationship as gently as possible. I knew I would be breaking his heart, but I also knew that this was going to give us both the absolutely best chance at being truly happy. I can’t and never have been able to make them truly happy and he has never been able to make me happy either.

The truth of our relationship has never been something I could share publicly and that was always difficult for me. It isn’t even something “bad” or wrong. Our relationship was the product of the environment we had to escape from and were survivors of. Getting married was the only way out of it for both of us. We have never fit the “normal” boxes. We have always been queer as fuck, and have never been allowed or been given real space to explore what that queerness looks like. That is, until the past few years.

I touched briefly on the reality of our marriage in my book. But even then I couldn’t go fully into details, and I won’t here either. The details of our story, the nitty-gritty dark details of what we both cried over and broke our way through are for us to know and to hold gently knowing how we hurt each other and how we forgave each other. For 12 years, we stayed together because it was how we survived, and now we both want each of us to have the chance to thrive and we know we can’t do that together.

I still vividly remember someone asking me on our wedding day, 12 1/2 years ago “are you excited to get married today???” and I looked at them blankly, feeling nothing but panic and knowing that I was not excited. The reality of that day was get married to him or die. I didn’t want to marry him, but I didn’t have a choice, I didn’t want to die yet.

We had some good years. We had some really good memories. And I know we’re going to have some really good memories ahead of us too. We have two really incredible kids together, and I know we’re actually good parents to them. That isn’t changing. We’ll just be parenting from two different living spaces now. In less than a week, we’ve created a very cohesive and comprehensive parenting plan, separated all assets, and put together all of the state required divorce paperwork without any drama and communicated fabulously. All because we are fantastic communicators, and have worked like hell to make sure we know how to communicate with each other.

We are good parents. Period.

We are solid, solid communicators with each other. Period.

And I think one day we can be really good friends too. But that day will need some space before I can get there. We will continue to work well as parents together because that’s what we’re good at together. We are not good at being partners together. And never have been, and that’s okay. It’s sad, and both of us are grieving 12 years of trying to make that work. And we are both excited about getting to be with people we are good at being partners with.

I’ve been fighting a lot of stigmatized societal shame about being the one initiating this separation. Even though I know it is 1000% for the best for both of us, it puts me and the kids in a difficult situation. A situation that not a lot of my people have known what to say about it. A situation I’m not even sure what to say to most people about. I am only 3 weeks into the fall semester, and the timing on this isn’t exactly stellar. But there also isn’t really an ideal time either. I feel horrible doing this to my ex, but also, he wasn’t happy, and it didn’t feel fair to him, or to me, to try to keep making something work that clearly was not and has not worked for a very long time. There is a lot of push and pull in my heart, and I feel really stressed about a lot of things. The least of all those is school, which I just have to make sure I stay on top of homework.

I want to hide. I’m afraid of his friends lashing out at me. I’m afraid of being painted as the bitch who’s broken his heart. Even though we have been on good terms and we both understand and have acknowledged in our own individual terms that this is the right decision, I still feel like I’m the bad person in the situation. And I’m not sure that feeling is going to go away any time soon. I feel relief because I have wanted out for a long time, but also feel embarrassed and ashamed and maybe even a little alone in a weird way.

Why is it that the best decisions, the good decisions, are often the hardest ones? The ones that rip us to shreds and make us cry the hardest?

I feel a relief that I have been longing for for many years, and I feel the weight of what the next at least year of adjustments is going to bring. I feel shame because of society’s narrative that “divorce is bad” even though I know this is a wise and good decision. I have walked away from a partner I never felt like was my partner. But I still have a partner who deeply loves me and who I deeply love and who is by my side, supporting me, and supporting my ex too, and that helps a lot as we navigate this new situation. We’re figuring this out. It’s a lot, but we’re staying afloat.