“Oh Fuck…What now?”
No one expects to be told, out of the blue, at 9am on a Saturday morning that their marriage is over…
You cry
You scream
You pack your shit and then you leave
But what comes next? Anger sure, there is plenty of fucking rage that comes with this. Grief, yup that will come in waves so strong they knock the air right out of your lungs. Shame, hysteria, anxiety, numbness they will probably all make an appearance at some point. If you’re lucky these may be accompanied by love, support, laughter and copious amounts of alcohol courtesy of your friends and family.
This is all part of the recognised process, part of the ‘healing’ and ‘closure’ we are familiar with from books, films and TV dramas. BUT what happens after that?
For me that was my Oh Fuck…What now? moment.
Once I was through the sadness and rage (well for the most part…) I all of a sudden had this whole new life I hadn’t planned for and it was exciting but also really fucking scary, there was the prospect of all the things I had never done that I now had to master:
Household finances
Flat pack furniture
Driving
Dating apps!
At 28 years old I realised I had never set up a single bloody bill (for the record I had paid my fair share) or actually been responsible for anything big within our home and I won’t lie to you the rage started up again, at my husband, who for the purposes of this series will be called The Ex, but even more at myself for allowing this to happen.
Fuelled by rage and cider, I set myself a challenge — to take control of my new life and to be who and what I wanted to be — and I have, with varying amounts of success, started to do this over the past year.
So over a year on from that Saturday morning and a few days before the first of my divorce hearings (delays in the divorce courts a surprising side effect of coronavirus no one talks about) I decided I would write a series of pieces about the past year of my life and how I navigated my Oh Fuck…What now? moment in the hope that it might help one or two people take control of their own shit and maybe make the rest laugh.
-Anon
