Mavis: Regret

About a week ago I had some buyers remorse on this whole separation situation. I'm not sure if what I experienced is part of what is natural for someone who is going through this to experience or not. I can't imagine there's a standard set of emotions/thoughts/actions that applies to every single person who goes through this kind of thing, but perhaps there are some things that are more "normal" than others. Here's what I'm talking about.

I'd been intent on this for awhile. I was confident that we'd exhausted all options and that if we stayed together, we'd be on a fast track to Nowheresville. I'd wake up in some college town in 15 years and be 50 years old, with no children, in a big, beautiful but empty house with nothing in my life, other than my partner,  resembling anything that I'd ever worked or wished to have within my reach. In short, I'd never have the life I wanted.

I needed a plan - I needed to be out. And fast. Life is short.

So I created a plan and followed through with it, which is 100% my style to do. I generally don't rest on my laurels when there's some action that needs to occur; if something needs a push to move forward, I'll make sure it happens. This is how I work and this is how I live.

But it scares me that I'm this way and this is where the regret starts to slip in.

Am I so non-negotiable in how I deal with things that any attempt at reconciliation never really stood a chance? Am I so rigid and so uncompromising that I killed my own marriage before it had a chance to get back on solid ground?

In short - can I stop this? Should I stop this?

So the voice in my head said, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a minute, wait a minute. Slow this train down. You don't have to do this; you don't have to walk away. Maybe all you need is space. Yeah... space. Not a divorce, no. What's really happening here is not that the marriage is the problem, but rather that the situation is the issue. So putting some distance between you and the situation is really what you need."

I present this idea during a counseling session like its some kind of revolutionary thinking - not the delusional ramblings of someone whose going on 45 minutes sleep and no nutrition and is basically insane from stress. Understandably, both the mental health professional and my soon-to-be ex-husband both looked at me like I was nuts, because it was nuts and made no sense.

"So what is this 'situation' that you're referring to?", they asked me quizzically.

It's the fucking marriage. Goddamn it. But I tried to salvage my precious idea, my golden nugget of hope. Because deep down, I desperately don't want to be the person who thrusts the sword into the belly of my own marriage; I want... sometimes, not all the time... to fix it. I have these moments where I think/convince myself that if I could just get some space to clear my head, and be in a place that doesn't cause me to have heart palpitations, that I could formulate an appropriate strategy to address this whole divorce situation and that I can fix it. I just need to be away from the situation...!

Mercifully, he wasn't having it. Its merciful because although it hurts that he won't even indulge the idea of attempting to work on things when we're living in separate cities, it's truly the most rational and practical approach to have. In the end, if I move away and then try to make it work, it would only be more stress, more resentment, more anger... and I can't tolerate any more of those things in my life, ever.

Stick a sword in me - I'm done.