HI Friends. I feel like a broken record, but once again my apologies for not posting in here the last couple weeks. I really don’t completely forget on purpose. Its just that the last few weeks have been INCREDIBLY STRESSFUL and chaotic and soooo busy with moving, packing, getting into my new apartment, then unpacking, setting things up, on and on and on and I wont bore you with the details of all that, but what happens is that all of Sunday goes by and then at some point, usually around 3am when Im jarred awake by my own insane mind, my brain suddenly screams: “OH SHIT!!! WIDOWS VOICE!!!!!”

And here we are.

We officially closed on our house on August 16th, and it was a mad rush getting out of there and having the house completely emptied out in time for the buyers. If not for the help of our Realtor, who is also a friend and colleague of mine, I dont think I could have gotten it all done. I honestly dont know what I would have done without his help, and also he tried keeping me sane, because there were a couple times the night before closing and the morning of closing day where I completely lost it and just had a meltdown. He played music from his truck in our driveway and kept ensuring me “we are going to DO this, Kelley! Its going to be great!”, as we piled more and more items into his pickup truck and down the stairs and out of the sheds and out of the garage and on and on and on, with him making multiple trips to the town dump to get rid of SOOOOO MANY THINGS. I dont want to say too much more than that about the last couple of days in the house, in this public forum, but lets just say it was in the Top Three of most difficult/stressful/devastating/revealing times of my life. Yeah.

Im in my new apartment now, and trying to slowly adjust to all the many changes. As Ive said before, divorce is weird. It is so very different than the experience of widowhood, in so many bizarre ways.  The biggest way is also the most obvious one. Nobody is dead. Nobody died. I detest when people compare divorce to being widowed, and when they say divorce “feels like a death.” Nope. Not at all. If you have ACTUALLY lost your husband because he suddenly, actually DIED, you would never in a million years make that comparison. When Don suddenly died on July 13th, 2011, there were, and ARE, countless times where I have wanted to talk to him, call him, text him, hug him, say hello, and whatever else. But I cant and I never can, ever again. Why? Because he is actually dead, and that is forever. Guess what I was just doing a few minutes before writing this blog post? Texting back and forth with my ex-husband, Nick. (theres another drastic difference between divorce and widowhood. I would never in a million years refer to Don as my “ex” anything.” ) And why was I texting with Nick? Because he is very much alive, and because we CAN. Is it weird? Sure. Is it a huge adjustment getting used to being the “ex-wife” and texting him from my mediocre apartment and my 3 part-time jobs and struggling life, while he’s texting from a gorgeous island and living out his days fishing by the ocean in retirement? Yup. Do I have a ton of mixed emotions and is it hard to not feel like I was cavalierly discarded so he could live out his life doing whatever he wants to do, without me? Damn right it is. But I choose to continue some sort of friendship with him, because he is alive and he is here and what we had matters to me and how amazing to have the CHOICE to talk to him if I want to, and when I want to. In divorce, there are choices. They are not easy choices and it often doesnt feel like a choice, if you were not the one who wanted the divorce. But there are choices that exist within the situation. With death, there are no choices. I woke up on an ordinary Wednesday, and I could NEVER see Don ever again.

So, I will CHOOSE to carve out a new and strange “whatever” with my ex-husband, in time, and we will have to figure out what that is and what it means, and all that comes with it. And I will also try and figure out my own life, and what comes next for me, and where I go from here, and how. All of that will come in time. For today, Im feeling sad about the way things ended up, and also grateful that I have the choice to pick up the phone and call my ex, if I should feel like hearing his voice, or if Im missing what used to be with us. And sometimes doing that hurts a little. But its not even close to the hurt of NEVER being able to speak to my person, ever again.

Thanks for reading, and for putting up with my negligence as I adjust to new choices.