One year. It’s been one year since my marriage took its final nosedive. I am reinventing Starting on Monday because it’s time to reinvent myself. It’s been a year and I’ve done nothing to better myself.
Well, that’s not true. I ended a marriage after 29 years. I am 53 and have been with my husband since I was 19. We had our ups and downs, and he is a wonderful man. He is one of those rare people who is truly a GOOD person. But he is bipolar and I found that it was affecting my mental state so much that I needed to find out what it was like to not walk on eggshells 24/7. What it was like to actually LIVE–go out, have fun, do things, be social…things my ex never did.
But I didn’t do any of that. He moved to his mom’s for a year, and now has an apartment, but with the pandemic, he is still here all the time. He’s still doing stuff for me around the house. He still comes over and we watch movies every Saturday night, and I still can’t be 100% me because I don’t want to ruffle his feathers.
I started 2020 strong. The divorce was final in Fall 2019 (fastest divorce ever, but that is for a future post). I started walking every morning after dropping my son at school, and I enrolled in Pilates 5 days a week and went back to WW. I LOVED it. But then I developed a terrible neck problem, horrible tennis elbow, my hip kept popping out of place, and Achilles tendonitis.
Welcome to out-of-shape midlife with auto-immune disease. This sucks!
I did too much too fast and as out of shape as I am at 53, my body said FU. Then came COVID. With no school to get up for I started sleeping in and stress baking. The walks stopped because of my hip and pilates closed. My ex started coming over to hang out all the time. Remember the real fear at the beginning? We sat and watched the news non-stop like it was 9/11 again.
I am so lucky we remain close, but I’m not sure either of us can move on now. We are kind of in this weird semi-together limbo but we are in the middle of a pandemic, I’m not sure I’m ready to start dating and going out to party any time in the near future.
Since I didn’t change my relationship enough, I’m changing the house we bought together 25 years ago. While I know the best way to move on is to move, I love my view, I love my house, and my son is only in 10th grade and doesn’t want to move. I also have 25 years worth of shit that the thought of moving makes me break out in hives. Hopefully, when I’m ready to sell, I’ll get my investment back.
I hope you join me as I remodel my home and my life….eventually. I’ll start on Monday.
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