942 days.
942 days ago it felt like my world came crashing down on me. From that day on, the life I had built over the previous 8 years of marriage would no longer be the life I would be living.
Well, my life would be the same. But my “world” wouldn’t be.
Life is what we experience each time we take a breath, when we feel alive just from looking into our children’s eyes or feeling their breath on our skin.
Life is literally every breath — the beginning and the end.
The world we live in, it’s what surrounds us, what we choose to do with our life (and some of what is chosen for us).
We don’t control life. We do control the world around us — the immediate environment we live in, who inhabits it, who we interact with, where we go, what we do for work, how we spend our time.
942 days ago, when my husband decided that the world we had built together was no longer what he wanted, it crushed me. But my life went on.
I was grateful to be alive and capable of creating an improved world for myself and my son. Just the year before, I was scared that I would die of cancer and leave my son motherless.
Maybe shedding a partner who was never capable of being there for me would be a blessing in the end.
Turns out, it was.
I found it was easier to breathe without him, after the initial sadness and anger passed. I realized how difficult it had been to be married to him, how hard I worked to keep my marriage intact. I just kept going because I didn’t realize I had a choice. I embraced the suck.
You don’t really learn who a person is until you divorce them. Shit got scary around here.
I would have preferred a more graceful period of battle, and a more reasonable, amicable 365-day wait on that whole divorce and custody battle aspect.
But now that we will finally be officially and legally and actually divorced?
It feels good, the finality of it.
I hope nothing happens to the judge before I get to the court house today.
If one more delay or snowstorm, or legal technicality pushes this out any more days… well I’ll suck it up and keep counting I guess.
Life goes on 😉
June Grace 
I am in the process of getting a dissolution from a narcissist. I’m the one who made the choice to end our marriage. Not realizing exactly what his personality disorder really was until this whole process got underway, I’ve found out the hard way how terrible he really is. Reading your caption, how long it took gives me such panic and fear washes over me. A year into this I can’t see going another 1,2,3 years. Oh and I didn’t mention we still live under the same roof with our two boys. I do find comfort knowing I’m not alone. Thank you for sharing your life and experience. Please God send me an end to this madness.
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Lou, I’m so sorry to read that you’re going through something similar with a narcissistic partner. I truly hope that your situation gets better and you can get away from the madness. It’s difficult, but I can say that learning how to communicate with him in a way that ignored everything except what I needed to communicate about our child made a difference. I’ll be thinking about you!
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