Life was loud, chaotic and downright loud at times. But it’s also fun, carefree and full of predictability. There was always a lot of alcohol, a lot of people, a lot of talk, many nights and early mornings. Every week he went out. Somewhere. Anywhere. I met a lot of people and we went to a lot of places. If he wanted something, he would go out and buy it. Was young. He had a lot of money and tons of time to waste. And though he had it all, he still yearned for more. Truth be told, all he had was stuff. stuff. He hardly had any real memories or experiences. He was out doing whatever felt right. He was about 70 pounds overweight, drunk all the time, careless and recklessly in love. Think of the movie National Lampoon’s Animal House mixed with Coyote Ugly. Yes, that was me. Any other day. While most people tend to wait until the weekends to have fun, I would power up from Monday to Friday and use Saturday to sleep everything. On Sundays, I would take a break, but only to prepare to do it all over again the next day. My hangovers weren’t just from booze-filled nights. I was hungover from a high lifestyle. He was always on the move and hardly ever slowed down. I was constantly looking for a good time. When I wasn’t having a good time, I would go down from my highs to a very exhausting low. This is how I came to the conclusion that this persecution was not good for me. In fact, it’s safe to say it was all an escape from a life he hated. I will never forget a day contemplating if I wanted to go home. I remember looking at my watch while still at the office, logging online to find flights to book out of town, dropping everything, and never looking back. What stopped me was our son. She loved him more than life and she absolutely had to go home with him. But he knew something had to give. I knew that the only way life could get better for me was if I just started walking towards who I was meant to be instead of continually walking away from him, losing myself.
I can’t pinpoint exactly the actual day I got fed up. I just remember there was a fire that lit in me one day that he told me to turn down the volume on my spirit because the volume was no longer working for me. The man I had thought he would die with and officially decided to part with after 19 years together. It had to happen. It was divide or die. We no longer have anything in common. We’ve already been teetering on the inevitable for years, we just needed to admit it out loud. We spent several years lying to our family and friends about what was really going on between us, but we knew what was coming. Spending money, buying things, drinking and partying and consuming whatever we could get our hands on just kept us distracted from our dysfunction. I do not change it. It only kept us distracted long enough to avoid having to face reality. This happens a lot in marriages, whether many of us want to own it or not. Ignoring the truth does not make it go away. It just hides it. But this was only part of the problem. Things in my life were always so damn loud and active and noisy. He feared boredom but needed peace.
After our separation, I knew that my next steps were going to be difficult to adapt but necessary. Imagine spending 19 years with someone and then one day, no. I had to start a new journey in my life that didn’t include someone else all the time. Literally. I knew I could do it, but I needed a starting point. This is what I did to make the process easier.
- do things alone – I started by making sure I slept alone. Each night. I hadn’t slept or done anything alone since the year 1999, so this move was very important. She needed to be alone with everything she did. Everything! She went out every day alone. I made sure to go to places that were packed with people. He hung out or ate alone. I used to go to the movies and screenings alone. I did not go out. I sat in the parks alone. I traveled alone. Yes, even to remote places and cities. I would look at the people. It scares me. I would write. I made sure no one knew where I was going. I would just go. The goal for me was to learn to enjoy my own company. I adapted pretty quickly. I don’t know why doing things alone is considered an anomaly nowadays, but I fell in love. I also learned that someone walking around alone does not mean that he or she is lonely or has no friends. It simply means that they are not prepared to entertain company or socialize at the time. This was perfectly fine for me. I felt more compelled to try new things without the added background noise. It has made me much more focused than I have ever been.
- clutter removed – Clean my house. I removed the walls. I bought a new bed. I gave away a lot of old furniture and threw the rest in the trash. I took all but one of my credit cards out of my wallet, called the companies, paid the balances, closed the accounts and cut them off! I gave most of my clothes to my mother and sister-in-law and kept about ten outfits for myself. I have about four pairs of shoes and maybe a pair of boots. It may be less than that. I shop seasonally and it’s never really what’s in season so I don’t know. I had too much stuff and I’m sure I had it around me because I attributed my happiness to it. Most of these items had very little meaning. It clogged my house, it left very little room and I was tired of looking at it. I even sold my car. What was the use? I live in the city. I take the train or carpool like Uber or Lyft wherever I go, which often isn’t a lot of places. I’ve become quite minimalist. My house is big but now it’s empty, filled with nothing but books, two capes, plants, my son’s instruments, a few laptops, and food. I hate clutter and excess. Living without him has become my new normal.
- Got rid of distractions – I unfollowed all celebrities on social media (with the exception of a small handful I actually know) and other people I don’t share a close personal connection with. I then deleted all social media apps. I don’t mind keeping up with trends or people I don’t know. Many of the people in my life were some of my biggest distractions. There is such a thing as meeting too many people. It’s not because they’re bad people, but because friendships were based on superficial ideals and got me nowhere. Unless there was something to go out and gossip and take some selfies while drinking, we barely had two words to say to each other. These relationships became stocks that needed to be sold quickly because the value had fallen dramatically from the initial purchase price. They knew it. I knew it. The distance widened, and as things began to change for me, within a few months we stopped talking. Friendships are beautiful to have. They can be fruitful, but they can also be exhausting. Nobody likes a loss. It is admitting that something went wrong or that you made a mistake. But cutting your losses can prevent you from taking a devastating downturn that is too steep to recover from later. Most of us get something wrong 3 out of 5 times a day. We still live to see another day. I still know a lot of people, but I only have a small handful of real friends. Trust me, there is a difference. Alcohol was the biggest distraction of all for me, so I stopped drinking. I gave up cold turkey. Alcohol not only kept me drunk all the time, it also kept me fat and sick. Eat out, too. I changed my relationship with food because I ate too much for no reason. Since then I have lost the 70 pounds I gained plus 20 more and have never felt better.
In a nutshell, getting things done just helped me get better control of my thoughts so I could declutter and get rid of all the distractions. The reward is that I have been able to reap the benefits of simplifying my lifestyle. I have gained a lot by getting rid of almost everything. It has taught me a lot about myself over the years, like how much I hate hoarding things and molding my happiness around objects and people. I hate doing things in excess. I’ve gotten into the idea that I don’t need to be around people all the time to be happy and excited. I have learned to set limits. I’ve learned to stop stretching myself so much and take more care of myself. Even my relationship with money has changed. Drastically. I have learned that the value is in the respect that one must have for the dollar. I never had respect for money before. All he knew how to do was spend it. I realized that everything I had ever wanted and needed I had had all along and everything else was a matter of social currency rather than a happy life.
We live in an era where social status is the new currency. That’s why we take photos of everything we do and promote our lifestyle on social media in the “be like me” style. Social media and current culture say that our pedigree and class are now strictly based on social engagement and how much we receive rather than how much we give of ourselves. To some extent, it has always been this way, but never to this extent. An environment has now been created where we feel the perceived need to realize our ambitions in a publicly documented format to keep pace with our peers and it has become a soul sucking trap. Many of us are deathly afraid of living unfiltered lifestyles because it goes against social norms and is considered risky.
But, it is not who we really are nor is it what we really want. Trust me, if everyone was as fit and happy as they photograph themselves, the world wouldn’t be in such chaos. We go out of our way to hurt each other often and are always seemingly stuck in a perpetual cycle of constant confusion. This is why depression is on the rise and more people are dying younger. You don’t notice these things when they’re happening because we’re socially conditioned to keep up appearances. We have grown to fix our personalities around the idea that nothing we have or do is worth anything unless others approve of it. It’s a shame that every decision we make has to do with making sure someone knows or sees it, in some way. Sun to sun. Every day. All the time.
I’m the happiest I’ve been since I stopped bothering with all that crap. He didn’t do anything for me anyway. He added nothing to my life. Literally nothing. I once avoided boredom and quiet rooms like infectious diseases. Now, I can’t get enough of either one. I divorced the shift in exchange for staying home, eating kid-friendly snacks, playing interactive games, cooking, and reading with my son. Turns out I’m having a lot more fun! My sleeping habits are better. My attitude improved a lot. I am much more focused. My hair has started to grow again, my skin glows, my house is quiet, and my heart is full.
