Somewhere along the line, I decided that my husband was my financial future. I couldnt have felt more satisfaction or happiness when he graduated law school then if I had done it myself. Yours is mine, and mine is yours, I'll tend to the chickens and you go to town partner.
I visualized my future with pride and security. WE worked hard during college, lived cheaply, sacrificed vacations and new furniture. I waitressed. He mowed lawns. We got by. Always though, with a vision. A vision of an easier life.
Sometimes, life throws you a curve ball.
I hadnt held a real job since our first child. Nearly seven years when we seperated. I worked part time but without any responsibility or awareness. In fact, my name wasnt even on our checking account and my identity was thoroughly entrenched in being a mother and wife.
The harsh realities of being responsible for myself and my two children came hard and fast. I lay awake in the new apartment feeling my heartbeat in my chest, reminding myself to breathe. I was giving a house, but in a down market and virtually unsellable, though I was hesitant to sell it anyway, viewing it more as a 401K because the new visions included me being homeless at sixty.
He stayed in the house I owned and paid me rent, which covered the new place. We were like amputees learning to walk on our new synthetic limbs.
I spent money like someone out of the depression, hissing to my children in Target "Can you believe these prices?!"
When I did buy things I felt physically sick.
I got a strictly commission job and never trusted anything I made the first six months. Believing it would end the next week or month. Still do. But I was putting something else in the bank that I didnt notice at first: Self esteem. Somehow, through this, I have realized that I can take care of myself. And my children. I can balance my checkbook, buy my groceries, pay my light bills, have a savings even. I have begun to think of goals and believe they are possible.
The experience of becoming financial independent after divorce is like education, once it's yours, it can't be taken away.
