Once upon a time, there was a young woman who was just dipping her toes into the social scene on the Internet. IRC (Internet Relay Chat) to be specific because these were the days before blogs and social media became something everyone knew. This young woman was pretty much one of the stereotypical nice girls. She hardly even dated because she was kind of a quiet, serious person and didn't really talk to men. However, getting online and talking to all kinds of people from the comfort of her own home was fun, exciting even. She became an IRC diva. This quiet, serious woman found herself made part of a group on an IRC channel. She had the feeling of belonging and having friends and she liked it. She began to flirt and play just as the others did. Back then IRC was new and talking online was a whole different game for people to learn to play. Many people were using the chat to 'hook up'. Actually, many women were looking for romance and love and many men were looking for a good screw, with something they hoped was female.

So, this quiet, serious young woman met a lot of men online. A group of women in the IRC channel became known for trolling and taunting the men online, those who came into the channel looking for easy women. This young woman was one of the three in the group. The others were Lis and Vix, for short. They had a lot of fun baiting and switching and laughing at the horny trolls.

Then there were the other people in the group, the other regulars. Most evenings they got together and played Truth or Dare in the public channel. The serious, quiet woman had no sexual experience to play the game telling Truth about. So she took the dares, almost every time. She became smart at finding loop holes, or just storytelling her way out of it. A good time was had by all, regardless of whatever Truth or Dares were told.

There were other women in the group, but there were men in the group too. Some became friends, fairly close friends, with the quiet woman (who by this time wasn't really all that quiet during the chat but was still fairly serious). One man in particular became a regular in the group and the serious woman liked him too. They talked, not just in the public chat.

He was married and wanted to divorce his wife. Things were not going well, she wanted out - or seemed to... You know how that story goes. In this case, the serious woman - though she really did like the man - pushed the man to stick with his marriage. She wasn't 100% on her decision, she was kind of lonely and still single and not someone who was out there dating outside of her Internet chat 'dates'. But, being the serious type she was, she did not think she could tell someone to end their marriage, even if she did consider it.

The man offered to come and visit the serious woman. It was a sincere offer, very unlike most offers which she heard from the horny trolls. But, she had her serious way and could not take that step into breaking up a marriage. So, time went on, they still talked and even traded home addresses to send real Christmas cards in the mail. After awhile, a year or so, the chat group broke up, as these transient sort of things will do. Someone had an issue with whoever was in control of the group and people were made to choose sides. Inside this side choosing the group dissolved.

The serious woman lost track of the man after awhile. She lost track of all her friends from the group within a couple of months to a year. She was sad about it but she had met other people and was fine.

A couple of years later she somehow found the man again. He was divorced (or separated) from his wife and living with one of the other women from the group. Not one of the two who had been her game playing friends but one of the women she had talked to in a more human to human way and had actually gotten to know a bit. Sadly, the serious woman was not one of those who saved every online conversation so the details were lost in the vast space of her mind.

The man and the woman both talked to the serious woman, and kept in touch for a short time. Then she lost track of them again as she so often does.

People will sometimes ask if you have regrets. I say no, not really. You can't go back and change things anyway, so what is the point of thinking of anything you regret. However, when I think about it, I do regret not being a little bolder, thinking more about myself than the other woman and what was right and proper in a by-the-book way.

So the moral of the story... don't try to live by rigid standards which you didn't set for yourself.

Holidays and events should be celebrated whether you are alone or with family and friends. Celebrate yourself being alive! There are moments of excitement. I loved having the whole bed to myself again and deciding what I wanted when it came to grocery shopping.

Getting on With Life After a Divorce

I had a short marriage and a long divorce.

Two people get married and two people get divorced. Does it really matter who starts (or ends) things officially?

In the end you feel battered, empty and less than sane.

Some women get divorced for obvious reasons like domestic violence. This wasn't the problem with my marriage. He just didn't want to remain married.

I don't have a magic answer for divorced women. But, I've been there and come out from the other side. It happens, you have to stay on track, keep going forward and watching one day turn into night and become daylight again.

Give Yourself Permission and Time to be a Wreck

For me I had a real need to go to a specific beach which I remembered from when I was a kid. Ironically, that beach was far, far away from where I was living when I was married and still far enough to be a full day's drive away from where I moved after the divorce. But, I just needed to be there. I still don't know why. Maybe I just needed a goal, something real to pull myself forward through one day to the next.

I bought a car. I used the last of my savings and the money I had kept from my parents (the money they gave me for my wedding). I paid cash, got the paperwork done and then I made my plans, packed and drove away. I spent a weekend in the town near the beach. I liked the drive itself but I knew I was headed to that beach like a migrating bird with a plan.

I didn't find that part of beach right away and it wasn't summer so things were a bit chilly and wet. I drove down as close as I could in the car and then I got out and walked down to the water. I didn't do anything. I stood there awhile and didn't feel anything. I hadn't felt anything for a couple of months. Then I got back into the car and drove into town, found a motel. I went out to find a grocery store so I could get fresh, new shampoo and soap. Some groceries: fruit and cottage cheese to have in the motel room. I like doing that when I take a road trip. Having new soap and shampoo, like a poor woman's day at the spa.

In the morning I began the drive back home. I didn't feel anything different. But, once I got back I applied for (and was happy to get) the first job I applied for. Maybe taking that time made some difference in how I did on the interview. Maybe getting away to that beach broke the ice inside of me enough that I could seem human again. Even though I wasn't feeling it.

Now, I understand how much I really was feeling buried under all my sand, ice, and whatever else. I was angry. Angrier than I could handle feeling.

Become Part of the World Again

Getting that job helped a lot!

So that's lesson two on how to be a divorced woman. Get yourself out there in the world. Be with people again, even when you don't want to. It helps if you put yourself in the path of no resistance. Like a job where you need to be doing things and you just go and do things without thinking about what you're feeling. Don't spend time dwelling on what an emotional wreck you are. Put that in the background so you can keep living.

It takes time to get through your feelings. They are too strong to work out all at once. Talking to people can help but it's not for everyone. Plus, I would not have wanted to even try sharing what I was feeling then. There was too much of it. As time went by and I could feel myself thawing out I knew I was feeling far more than I would ever want to let loose on another person. Too much of almost every emotion.

I don't want it to seem that I never talked to anyone during this time. Of course I did. I had one friend in particular who helped me a lot. She had a lot more experience with men. My husband had been my first big relationship, first time of being physically intimate and my first marriage. She gave me perspective. Which I really needed.

At one point I was sure I was clinically insane. But that was in the very early days when I still felt less than human and frozen. I kept a personal blog those days. At the end of the time, about the time I started the job, I deleted the whole blog. I really regret that. In my life I would say I really don't have any big regrets, but that is one. There is no way I could remember the things I wrote in those days. But, keeping the journal was so important. Essential, really.

Don't Burn Out: Start Letting Some Things Go

I regret deleting that blog and all my angst, rants, tears and fears. But, I know it was a step I took (a big one, as it was not an easy decision to make at the time I did it) towards letting go and moving away from the wreckage, flotsam and jetsam of the divorce.

At some point you need to begin putting space between the person you were when you were married, the person you became as you were divorced and the shiny, new person you are becoming as you stop being an open wound.

You do begin to heal and to forget some of your feelings. Some of it just becomes less important.

I didn't realize how angry I was with my ex-husband until I discovered he had changed his email address and I didn't have the new one. It really bothered me that I might not be able to contact him, or at least have the feeling that he was there on the other end of the Internet. (We had been friends far longer than we were married). At that point, on that day actually, I discovered a lot of anger and let it go. I couldn't hold onto anger when I understood that I couldn't let go of him, our friendship and all that we had been and done together. It won't ever be the same, but it's something I want to keep. Over ten years since the divorce and I'd say he is a friend again. It changed over time, in stages.

Letting go of anger was such an important step in getting my own self back. I think that was when the last of the frozen feeling finally left me. I began not only being in the world again but feeling I was actually there, in the world, again.

Stop Being a Divorced Woman

Last of all, think about who you want to be and put yourself there.

I started this by typing that I was married a short time and divorced a long time. That is how I felt. I was seeing myself as a divorced woman, not a single woman, not a career woman, not a woman even. I put the divorced as front and centre of who I am.

I don't any more.

Now I'm just me. I happen to be divorced. But, it's just one facet of who I am. It's not how I introduce myself.

So that's how I was a divorced woman and how I found my way out of it - to be myself again.

Caught between calm and chaos she holds her head high... Newly found strength, courage and grace confidently guide her.

This is from my old Live Journal posts.

It's been awhile since I posted here. I haven't entirely forgotten LiveJournal but I have a few other sites I'm writing for, my own and a couple for a friend. Since the advent of social media, or since social media became something more than a chatty thing, there isn't enough time to fit everything and every site in.

Today I got reading back to my oldest posts in LiveJournal. I'd forgotten some of the people and places along the way in the past years. I liked remembering some of them. Funny how the guys I was dating who made me feel so bad at the time but now I can really only remember one of them. The only one I actually spent time with in the real world, not just online. Shows how seriously I should have taken all that offline romance. Not seriously at all or in any way.

I'd like to say I'll post here again but the fact is that I probably won't. I notice a bookmarklet up there, seems new (or new to me). I might add it to my browser and see if I can keep this old site from falling stale again.

Happy Summer,

Laura

Comment from lakeguy - always nice to read your posts

My ex and I are becoming friends again. It won't ever be the same as the days before we were married or while we were married. But, I didn't like feeling estranged from him. We are far apart in physical distance but we have never been very far apart in friendship. It's hard to let that slip away even after a divorce.

I don't think every couple can go through divorce and keep a friendship. You have to let go of a lot of anger, sadness and other emotions. You even have to forgive things that you can still hear him saying in your mind. You need to let go (or hold less tightly) to things that hurt you so deeply you can almost feel the cracks in your heart, mind and soul. But, for awhile there is just numbness. That's how you pull yourself away at first. You just don't feel anything.

Then you live through the aftermath. The time it takes to rebuild yourself and your life. It takes a lot of energy to rise from your own ashes. I went through a time of wondering if I could ever feel connected to the world again. I journaled through the worst of it. Writing helped sort out my thoughts and pull some of them out of the muck my mind was in.

Then his email bounced, about six months after our divorce. I felt a shock that I might not know where he was, or that I could not contact him any time. That was the moment I reached back and connected with him again. It wasn't friendship right then. It was more like a feeling of loss, not wanting to lose our connection, whatever state it happened to be in at that time.

Now, about ten years later, we are friends. It's not a comfortable friendship where I just say whatever I am thinking and know he will understand. There are things I don't want to say. There are things that have become too personal. I's not as simple and uncomplicated as it had been. Ironic that the person I have been more intimate with than anyone (other than my Mother in a different kind of relationship) is someone I now feel reserved with and unsure. It's not that I don't trust him. I just feel I have to hold back. Burned once... twice shy. I don't believe he would hurt me but the burn mark is there, it hasn't quite gone away.

I am glad the friendship is there. It's worth keeping. My family wonders if we could/ should get back together. I don't like when they ask that. It's like they deny everything I felt and went through. As if it all were nothing. But, I don't say much about any of it to them.

By the time I actually publish/ post this a lot of what is on this screen right now will be edited out. I don't want to hurt my ex-husband or have him feel bad about what I'm feeling or have felt in the past. I am responsible for my own feelings, for what I take seriously and what I brush off. He isn't. In the end, I think that is how you recover from the divorce and re-work the friendship. You just decide what is important and what your priorities are. You don't choose to be bitter, you just choose to be happy.

• Two hours of writing as per the 90 Day Plan.
• Check the usual places for any interesting freelance work that might pop up.
• Look for post ideas to be rewritten for HubPages.
• Reading Suite101 University eCourses.
• Grab March bus pass.
• Read/ take back/ renew library books
• Police check thing for Barrie Health Centre
• paperwork for cultural diversity for Barrie Health Centre
• forms for self employment - expenses and earnings.
• Walk-in-clinic for referral for possible surgery. Maybe. Bleh.
• Write paid post for this week.