Ten Years On

10 years ago, I was a bride! I was so, so happy. When that marriage ended, I was the most broken I had ever been in my life. For a longgg time, I didn’t think I could ever feel joy again.

I couldn’t understand how people could take the bus, go to work, eat ice-cream, laugh — my world had turned upside down, how is everyone else just going on?? I felt like everyone got the memo on How To Do Life but me.

Divorce was my biggest failure. And people made it harder by reminding me over and over how God hates divorce and I made it harder on myself by believing God was punishing me.

10 years since, more mistakes made and more lessons learned, I am so grateful for it all, for the life I’ve built for myself since, for the people who are around me now, for the relationship I have with God, for how much weirder and more intense I am as a person haha.

For a long time, people found it audacious that I could be happy after divorce. Its like they expected and wanted me to remain miserable. “How dare she be happy again?” “How is she allowed?!” Haha.

I think on some level they think that by me just talking about being happy/at peace after divorce meant that I am pro-divorce?? People are baffling.

Because I’ve gone through divorce, I know just how life/heart-shattering it is, and I never want that for anyone. I will never encourage divorce for someone else. That is something only the people in the marriage can decide.

I am no longer ashamed to be a divorcee. Divorce is part of my story and it always will be, but it’s hardly the main chapter.

Onwards. Bismillah.