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My Wedding Anniversary, My Divorce Anniversary, and Me.
It’s just a day now. But once, it meant something. It was the reminder of a wedding day that neither of us enjoyed- having had far too little money to make it what we wanted and being inundated with the anxieties caused by difficult relatives and a sudden storm at the start of an outdoor ceremony. We told each other, and everyone else, that it was the marriage and not the wedding that counted.
I wonder sometimes if we kept repeating it to convince ourselves.
Now another anniversary rolls around. The date that I filed for divorce, an easy enough date to remember. Then, the date that my divorce was finalized, 9 months to the day of the filing.
No one seems to celebrate those anniversaries, the dates that marked the days we changed our lives. Do we feel, secretly, like it’s a failing? After all, people tend to judge marital longevity as a marker of success. Divorce is seen as a failure while staying inside of a bad marriage can be merited as an achievement.
But what does it achieve to stay stuck in a mistake? What possible success can be measured in living a life that is so much less than what it could be? Sure, relationships are tough. But not all relationships are healthy. Some are even toxic. And too many people stay, not because they are determined to make it work, but…
