I intended my life to be

a long beautiful novel of an exquisite international genre and with lovely dashes of they-lived-happily-ever-after, mother-father-children-grandchildren, and in old age the couple walked-hand-in- hand-together-into-the-eternal-sunset.  In other words, a solid one piece story, a thick book where the same characters are a part of the beginning, the middle, and the end, just like in my parents' story and in the story of my grandparents.

My own story would be the continuation of the legacy my grandparents and my parents had started but since life does not always turn out the way we intend it to do, the novel ended abruptly, without explanation, somewhere in the middle and no more chapters were ever written, and with that the legacy is dead, tarnished, broken. My future, as I saw it, fell apart and the stories of my past did no longer apply.

Now, instead of a long and continuous novel my life has turned into a series of free standing dramatic and at times brutal short stories, which apparently, and to my great dismay, is a much more common and modern form of telling people's life stories nowadays. The difference is grim. Think Downton Abbey, a long continuous story surrounding the same klan members, vs. NCIS Miami, with free standing episodes and different characters jumping in and out of the storyline. Downton Abbey is of masterpiece quality and one has to view the story from the beginning to fully understand its content while NCIS Miami can be casually viewed and digested at any time by anyone and without having followed any of the previous episodes...No wonder I am horrified!

Over time it has become very apparent that God has given me the task of somehow perfecting the art of being a divorced woman and single mom, but so far I have miserably failed my assigned character and thus it feels as if I am repeatedly told to go back to GO. Redo! Reset! and worst of all; with my children as constant casualties. I have asked for a script, a manual of sort, but have come to the realization that swing, duck, fake it til you make it, and fly at the seat of your pants is the proper approach to handle everything that comes my way, which in my mind is quite the load of bull shit by the way.

Could God not have given this merciless task to a less traditional, conservative, and snobbish person than myself? Someone that would have handled this predicament in a better way? Someone that would not feel so miserably worthless to be in this situation, someone that had some previous knowledge and experience of how to live in a divorce setting. Yes? No?

I recently read an article with the title The only thing harder than being a military wife is not being one anymore, and while this is incomprehensible to most civilians, people that are or have once been a part of the military knows exactly what the author is talking about. While most divorces mean that people break up from their partner but still lives in the same town and perhaps even the same old house and go to their regular workplace as usual, my divorce meant that I totally had to change worlds since my marriage came with a military lifestyle and a community that I all of a sudden no longer belonged to. For regular people this would be as if they could never be able to go back to their old familiar neighborhood or any of the organizations or facilities or establishments that used to surround their daily lives. In addition a large number of people that had been a part of their lives for so many years they would never meet again. I was all of a sudden an outsider, no longer a member as the carpet was pulled from under my feet. I was falling and no-one was there to catch me. It seemed as if people from the military viewed me as hazardous to associate with, a loose cannon, or a liability. This of course due to the high rank and power that my husband had at the time which made some members of the military and their wives think that it would be unfavorable for them to associate with me at all and that it could compromise their own position in some strange way. For that I have forgiven them all since they are only humans :-)

So now, why am I writing about all this (since everyone should be getting over their divorces in two weeks or less)? A blogpost authored by a Swedish woman in San Diego, who works as a university professor, with the title The power of falling apart (or perhaps The strength of falling apart) made me really think about my own life from a very different perspective. Perhaps it is not so bad to have your life as you planned it fall apart after all. Perhaps it is a chance to get away from something destructive and to be given the chance to rebuild and reinvent yourself.

Also read HERE about Why Lying Broken in a Pile on your Bedroom Floor is a Good Idea. 

Again thank you Annika for writing about such relevant topics from such a great angle. You provided me with a lot to think about.

"We are already “never not broken.” We were never a consistent, limited whole. In our brokenness, we are unlimited. And that means we are amazing".