Single Again - By Achsha SoAndSo
Single Again - Available at Achsha,com Today, Facebook reminded me that on this day, 10 years ago, my divorce from my
rst husband was nalized. I remember that day very well. I was working my sales job and told my manager that I would need the morning o to attend the hearing and would hop back on route when I was done.
She was taken aback and asked me if I needed to take the day o . She didn't get it. I was EXCITED to get this over with. It had taken nearly two years for this day to come. Hearings, PPOs, custody, child support, lawyers; I was over it. I planned on celebrating.
Turns out, she was right. All of the enthusiasm that I had walking into court evaporated when I had to publicly admit to a room of strangers, without the bene t of context, that I had failed at marriage. The day we got married six years prior, I stood before a judge, my family and promised God that I would "love, honor and obey until death parts us". Now, I had to swear that the opposite was true. That our marriage had broken down to the extent that it couldn't be repaired. Much to my chagrin and embarrassment; I cried. My ex saw it, everyone did. I ended up taking the day o and not going back on route.
Single Again - Available at Achsha,com Single Again - A Story Brake By Achsha SoAndSo
Outside the City-County Building in Downtown Detroit, in front of the Spirit of Detroit statue where my now ex-husband had proposed to me, we talked for the
rst time in a long time. "It wasn't that bad Achsha. We didn't have to do this." I cut my eyes at him. He thought the tears were for him, or, to mourn what had been our sham of a marriage. They weren't. I cried because I had given this relationship all that I had. Everything. And I still failed.
10 years later and I am ling for divorce again. This divorce won't take as long as the rst, he and I have nothing to discuss. He wants out as badly as I want to be done. I plan to have him served before the year is over which starts the six month "cooling o period" that the courts require when you have a minor child in common.
Things have been awful for a long, long time between us, possibly from the very onset of the relationship. Meeting and marrying someone in the span of two months is never a good idea. I should have known that rsthand since I married husband #1 just six weeks after we met. It took three years for us to have a baby.
With my soon to be ex-husband, I got pregnant on the honeymoon.
So here I am; two husbands, two daughters, two divorces in two decades. Wow.
Despite my tone; I'm optimistic. I held on to my second marriage for all the wrong reasons but what it boiled down to was fear. I judged my mother very harshly for being married three times. For being a single mother. For the things she ignored when it came to my siblings. For the things she chose not to teach us.
Single Again - Available at Achsha,com Single Again - A Story Brake By Achsha SoAndSo
I wanted so desperately not to repeat her mistakes that it clouded my decisions and silenced my intuition. During these last 8 years, my Brudder Juan died. Then my mother. I lost a cousin the year before my Brudder and my Pastor in the years between Juan and my Mom. Months before her death, I was red from a job which devastated me, then laid o from the next. My youngest daughter has been diagnosed with autism and ADHD.
The trauma and tumult in my life kept me clinging to a splintered relationship with a partner who apparently has always held other interests that chipped away at our foundation. But I can't place the blame on him; "Blaming you is just so easy, but maybe the problem's me." *
Its in moments like these where you are either burned by the re or molded by it; I choose the latter. Blaming others for where I nd myself does nothing to help me to move forward. I am the common denominator in both failed marriages. I'm responsible. Not for what they may have done to me but for how I responded to those things. I'm not a victim so I choose instead to look at my role and more importantly, how I can learn from it.
"Looking for the love in somebody else that I prolly shoulda gave to myself. Cycles I need to break in myself...I'm single again. Guess that's just the way it's gone be.
Maybe I should spend this time on me." *
I spent most of the rst decade of this millennium with husband #1, the majority of the second decade with husband #2. Going into 2020, the goal is not another husband but to be the best me I can be. To believe in my light and in myself AS myself. Here's to 2020, not just another year; a whole new decade.
* - Big Sean "Single Again"
Single Again - Available at Achsha,com Single Again - A Story Brake By Achsha SoAndSo
Ironically, Big Sean lmed this video in what is now known as Spirit Plaza, outside of where I was married and divorced from Husband #1. You can see the Spirit of Detroit Statue and the City County building in the background.
Single Again - Available at Achsha,com