Betty's Year in Review: Part One.

It’s time for Betty’s Year in Review, presented to you in four parts, and not all harmonic as we see here in Part Number One.

2012 was the year I got divorced. 

Believe it or not, it’s still a little hard for me to write the D word.

I was sure my marriage would last forever.  After all, had we not made a promise to remain true and faithful to one another “until death do us part"?  

After he left, I discovered all the ways in which he had been preparing for his departure.   (Example: I thought he was cleaning up his home office. He had actually been packing it up.) As time went on, I discovered more things, more reasons why he left.  Pieces of the puzzle slowly revealed themselves. I felt so stupid.  I felt like the naive fourth grader who believes a cruel friend who tells her,  “I’ll be right back” and blindly waits in the classroom while the friend runs out to recess, laughing at how easy it was to dupe her. 

During this past year I have had to go back and comfort that little girl over and over.  She was blind, unquestioning, trusting and took any signs of affection and comfort (and there were many, part of the plan I suppose) as signs that all would be well.  

The face-saving part of me wishes I had been more suspicious, but I know that is just my ego trying to regain a sense of dignity. I can’t be the kind of person I want to be, I can’t be the mom, the teacher, the friend, the writer I want to be, if I let that part of the ego take over and color my world in shades of constant mistrust or suspicion. 

That kind of behavior is not in my nature nor do not want it to be.  Is it worth the chance that I’ll get duped again in my life?  I guess it has to be.  It’s a risk I’ll take to live my life the way I need to live it.

2012 was the year that one piece of paper came out of the printer, stark, black and white, with the signature of a judge who had never seen either of us, signifying that it was over.  It all came down to one piece of paper.  

Amazing.  

The simplicity of that paper and ink is situational irony at its greatest.  

I still struggle with being divorced.  

It is a mind-boggling thing to have your world shift the way mine did in 2011 and 2012, and I wish my inner work were done. (As I am sure some of you wish the same!  Get over it, Betty!)  

Believe me, I am an impatient person and I want so badly to stride into 2013 without the baggage of 2012, but I am finally getting it through my head that it does not work that way.  Yes, I do stride at times, and then I stumble, and I fall and sometimes I still crash, but I get up again and each time it gets easier.  

The fog is starting to lift and I am starting to see how I accepted things in my life that should not have been accepted.  

I am starting to see that I was being given scraps and leftovers when I deserved a full, rich meal.  

I am starting to claim for myself those dreams and ambitions that I gave up so many years go to fulfill someone else’s definition of success.  

Can you hear Betty roar, my people?  Can you?  

Oh, I think you can.

Tomorrow:  Betty’s Year in Review, Part Two.