How I Found Freedom

By Choosing the Brave Decision to End My Marriage

8/2/2024

What are brave decisions?
They are the decisions we fear making because we know they come with a side of judgment and backlash that will hurt.
They go against the grain of everything society has taught us to believe in.
Yet, they hold the power to change our destiny.

#Storytime

I knew my marriage wasn’t going to last shortly after we came home from the honeymoon, but I didn’t want to admit it.
With everything inside of me, I didn’t want to be the couple who got divorced a year after getting married. I’ve been one of the guests who mumbled things like, “How did they not know this would happen?” or “Why did they even get married to start with?”

But the reality was, now that I was in that situation, I could honestly say the man I returned home with after the honeymoon wasn’t the same man I stood at the altar with weeks before. Something had changed.

I stayed for eight more years, praying it would shift back into what we had before the wedding.
I stayed through every blaring red flag alert that came in:
🚩 He quit another job
🚩 Waking up to doors left wide open the night before
🚩 A hole he put in the wall because he was mad at me
🚩 Finding empty bottles hidden in strange places
🚩 Cash disappearing from the counters
🚩 Endless screaming, yelling, and fighting
🚩 Calls from the therapist that he hadn’t been there for weeks
🚩 Being over our heads in collections

I stayed.
I prayed.
I tried.

I went back and forth in my mind, flip-flopping—playing a game of Eenie Meenie Miny Moe:
Get divorced or stay married?

Eight years.
I lost eight years of my life because I was scared people would judge me for leaving.
I didn’t discuss it with anyone.

The day I finally said the words out loud and accepted the truth I’d wanted for a long time, all the chains broke, and I was free.
I could finally start coming back to life.

What if I had someone who could have helped me make that decision years earlier?
Someone who would have put the cards on the table without sugarcoating it or offering their opinion, but who would have asked the hard questions and refused to let me lie to myself.

Questions like:
💕 Why are you so scared of being judged?
💕 What do you think will happen because you’re judged?
💕 Are you the same person now as you were before the wedding?
💕 Do you think your moral value is tied to the “success” of this marriage?
💕 Are you responsible for the decisions he’s making?
💕 Is this the life you want for yourself and your kids?

Maybe I wouldn’t have had to completely break before saving myself.