My divorce was final today.
I've been wanting to be able to say that for a long time. Now that it's true, there's a strange and surprising mixture of emotions I was unprepared for. Relief I expected of course, but there is also regret over the years I stayed that I shouldn't have, guilt towards my children and also towards my (now) ex-husband because some part of me feels that I should have been able to prevent it from coming to this, and sadness - a person I once loved, whom I shared some of the most incredible moments of my life with - the births of my children- is now no longer part of my life and, worse than that, hates me with every fiber of his being. Failure. Stupidity, because I KNEW what he was before I married him. Pity, because he doesn't even realize what he's lost and how he lost it, and so is doomed to do it all over again. Anger over how he has and still continues to treat me, and absolute boiling rage over the fact that he thinks nothing of using my children (which are his children as well) as pawns in his little games of revenge upon me.
A chapter of my life is over. I just wish it were a story, and I could go back and edit it...