Did you know that in the long run, men are overall financially much better off after divorce than women? It makes sense when you consider it’s usually the wives who stay home with the kids, but did you also know that divorced men are far unhealthier, more depressed, and don’t live as long? I think those stats show an interesting juxtaposition.
It’s funny.
What people think will make them happy.
I can see the money part being true. In my case, we were a single income family –not by choice. And the things that led to us being a not-by-choice single income family were, shockingly, not made better by the sole provider leaving it. For a good while I was too busy emotionally surviving the abandonment and worrying about the more pressing financial aspects to focus on what the drop in socioeconomic status would really mean for me in the long run.
Two plus years later and my peers…. aren’t that anymore. While we were never quite as well off as most of our other married, double-incomed friends, we were getting there. Actually, we likely would have gotten there by now had things gone more respectably. Instead, financial future eviscerated, I’m left struggling to get by on a divorce settlement and whatever other means I can cobble together while I’m alone with my children, making the chances of rebuilding my life in any meaningful, satisfying way…challenging.
I believe that Husband was always going to leave, and I idly wondered soon after he did if it would have been better if he’d yanked that rug out sooner. Maybe, if I were younger, I might have wanted to try to start again with someone with better values. I might have still had the energy then to forage for emotional security. Or at least have the hope for it.
But let’s address that it’s different for a woman to be left in middle age than it is for a man in very specific ways. I feel like I’m waiting in dread for menopause to roll up some year soon and complicate- if not put a more definitive period- at the end of my love life. Honestly though, I feel the closing of so many doors I can hardly keep track of the ones that mattered, but that one I deadbolted shut myself for everyone’s sake.
In the beginning, I did go through flashes of panic thinking I needed to fill that void left in my heart. Like I was on the wrong side of 40 in a Jane Austen novel and needed to make a suitable match before it was too late and I’d be alone for the rest of my days before dying penniless. And sure, if I didn’t have my kids 24/7, maybe I could’ve, I don’t know, learned to contour or something and delved into the hellscape of online dating. But really, it was already too late.
On the other hand, had he done this to me in my fifties, it may have been worse in some ways, but chances are we would’ve had some savings by then that when divided would’ve given something me to start over with; a fighting chance at economic stability. Not to mention– it would have been super nice to not have had all that emotional distress heaped on me during a pandemic. And the girls, well- they at least would have had a stable family for their entire childhoods, making them that much better poised to take on the events of the last two years, as well as the future dystopia they’ll be spat into as adults.
I’m sure there isn’t any *good* stage to suddenly find yourself abandoned, but being ditched right in the middle of not just raising our family, but of my life, has left me feeling all the ways I’m uniquely stuck. The question seems to be then: How do I unstick myself?
The Well-Meaning, who don’t quite fathom the fine print of my situation, almost always suggest it would be easier to rebuild my life someplace else. And I mean, I get it. New Orleans is no longer the place I moved to last century, or even the place where I started my family thirteen years ago. This iteration of the city isn’t particularly safe or sustainable for a mother living alone with young daughters.
But custody agreement aside, unless ‘someplace else’ comes with a stable place to live, affordable and trustworthy childcare that allows me to have that livable wage earning job that would also have to actually exist so I could fully support us, moving in itself isn’t a solution. It’s the lack of those things here that leave me with no real sense of any kind of security, but for the next several years, until my children get older, I’m…stuck.
From the minute he left, my life was instantly overflowing in one way and very empty in another. My life isn’t even mine, not really. I’m secondary to my children. It’s the ballad of the single parent and somedays I wish I drank more because while being stuck is arguably better than falling, nothing wears you down like being stuck as things keep piling on top of you while you’re trying to maintain that not falling bit.
Being both stuck and hanging by a thread is just a weird way to exist and trying to balance out optimism with reality like I do takes a lot of hope. But hope isn’t a plan. There is no plan. Having a plan means you have options to choose from. So, the question really is: When do I get to be unstuck.? When does that statistically- likely- for -me- as- the -woman- post-divorce happiness get rolling? When do I get to really start thriving?
When is it my turn to rebuild my life?
I can’t answer that for sure. Lives don’t just rebuild themselves- not at any angle I’d probably like, but building anything– a career, relationships, a life, takes time. I don’t have that right now, and by the time I do, I worry it won’t be enough. For now, I don’t get a day off. Or a night. All I can do for now is manage my expectations and try to focus on whatever can be accomplished for myself while still being always available for my daughters.
Since having no time to cultivate friendships or opportunities is pretty isolating, I have to adapt to work within that isolation to keep from growing stagnant. As an introverted misanthrope, this should really be my time to shine and I’ve been great at cultivating simple joys. Sunsets. Full moons. The air before a storm, the wind when it’s a longing howl. The smell of burning leaves. Youtube videos about affluent asian women cleaning their already pristine homes and preparing food for their family. Finding that quiet stretch of street where I can just peacefully scream away in my car…
When there’s time, I write.
I believe– I hope–that in the future there will be brightness. Maybe the books I write sell or I win the lottery, or some equally fantastical thing happens. Maybe it ends up being something more mundane, but whatever that future is- I hope it happens because of something I’ve worked for while stuck here or because of choices I’ll get to make for myself eventually. That’s the light I reach for while in this years-long holding pattern of single motherhood. A life I am able to choose.
Until then, I’ll be here assigning backstories to urban land fowl.
(I love my children, but this summer alone with no breaks was rough, you guys.)
