Avenue Montainge

I took myself out to a movie yesterday. A girl can only work so long in the yard, after all. It was a French movie, "Avenue Montainge", at the Broadway. My friend, Celia, said it was the best movie she has seen this year. And it lived up to her review. It's a story of a handful of separate individuals in Paris, all at turning points, beginnings and endings in their lives, whose paths cross for various reasons. The stories are beautifully interwoven and told both with joy and melancholy, true to the French style.

As I watched the characters in the movie facing the transitions in their lives, I realized how much this reflected my own life at the moment. And I had a bit of a revelation: I can no longer take the skaterbug skim-across-the-surface approach to my feelings about my pending divorce. It's time to deal with my feelings directly and honestly.

There is a lot of pain involved in that, and grief too. And shock. I have learned things about my husband I never knew, and would never have believed before now. What seemed like a happy marriage to me was hell to him and then became hell for us both. I'm only beginning to understand all the reasons why. In the past three years, I reached the point of wanting this divorce on three different occasions, and twice I thought it was important to try to resolve the problems and to get through the tough time together-- "better or worse" and all that. But I finally realized he was only waiting for me to be able to end the marriage, as it had ended for him long before and he was only playing a part to please other people. I never knew the secrets and lies, I never knew how he suffered, though near the end, there was serious depression. Now, he tells people he has never been happier in his life.

That's hard to take.

So I'm wrapped up in my own life now, figuring out what that is and who I am again. I feel sad a lot of the time, but I don't say I "am" sad. "Am"is a state of being, and my state of being is not sad. I also feel happy a lot of the time. I'm starting to realize a sense of freedom. My nature is to find solutions, make things better, be hopeful. I have been treading water for nine months since initiating the legal part of this, and it looks like we have a couple more months before everything is worked out. I don't know why it takes so long or is so difficult.

Some years ago Oprah had a couple of seasons of shows on the theme "Change Your Life." I took to that idea so wholeheartedly and literally, that I was able to start making some significant changes and improvements in my home and myself. I never understood why my husband allowed things to fall into disrepair in our home, why he didn't seem to care. Now I understand better. Little by little I changed every room in the house and then moved on to the outdoors. I quit my job that was sucking the life out of me, and took a job that was easy and allowed me to have a life. I took several classes in Qigong which truly helped me find comfort and internal peace through meditation-type practice. I learned I was harboring a lot of pain within myself and I found a way of letting go of it. It was all preparing me for this time when I would need to take care of the house and yard alone, and would need to find strength within myself like I have never needed before.

Like the characters in the movie, the road divides here for me and I have to choose a path to take. I have been thinking I want to embark on a time of some intense serious writing. Not just blogging, not just writing instruction manuals. But another project that has been on my mind for a long time. I think its time has come. But first I need to get finished with the legal part of this ordeal. I'm taking back my maiden name, for reasons I may or may not explain later. But it's important to me now to change my name. And when the judge says it is final, I will finally be free from this limbo.