Well, what do you know!!

For several reasons (trying to get my groove back...trying to step into my dreams....) I've been getting up early in the morning to write. Sometimes, I sit at my desk or the table in the coffee shop, and nothing happens. At all. So rather than not write, I just write any old thing. Whatever spills out the other end of my pen is acceptable. As an antidote to yesterday's whiny post about not doing everything I want to be doing, this morning I started listing things in my life that I'm grateful for.

The first thing on the list was that I was grateful to be divorced. WHAT???? Not always. Not fully. But still. It was full-stop amazement when I realized that I had written something monumentally, unbelievably true. I never, ever believed this moment would come.

It's still new and tentative and odd-feeling. I can locate the familiar reasons to be sad with very little trouble. But it's time (and past time) to start rehearsing the newly-true thing. I am freed from being subtly belittled every single day. I am so happy that the people remaining in my life don't punish me by withholding. I am glad that I can begin to make my own way.

In an effort (a successful effort, by the way) to actually make myself plunk down the wad o' cash necessary to get myself and the purple luggage to Tuscany this summer, I watched Under the Tuscan Sun last night. Diane Lane says this, "Do you know the most surprising thing about divorce? It doesn't actually kill you. Like a bullet to the heart or a head-on car wreck. It should. When someone you've promised to cherish till death do you part says "I never loved you," it should kill you instantly. You shouldn't have to wake up day after day after that, trying to understand how in the world you didn't know. The light just never went on, you know. I must have known, of course, but I was too scared to see the truth. Then fear just makes you so stupid."

It is surprising. I thought it would kill me. And there are still days, as you know, when I don't feel quite this confident that it won't. But I need to shine the light (the Tuscan sun?) on these days rather than the bad ones. It's that new focus that makes all the difference in the world.