Fast forward a couple of years later and this time my ‘x’ left me and filed for divorce. It was a very difficult time. My father had passed suddenly early that year; my boss had made my work miserable from day one, and with my life falling apart because of these two events, he took advantage of doing everything in his power to make my performance suffer even more.
Within a 6-8 month period, the divorce was finalized, lost my job, and I moved out of my home and all that my life represented to that point.
Eventually I moved into an apartment; it was the first time ever I’ve been on my own and taking responsibility for everything.
I don’t know where my friend was in all this. My first memory into single life was he calling me to the apartment letting me know he had accepted a job in the Northeast and was already there.
He also called to introduce me to ‘his family’: a woman and son who would be living with him. Even more, he put her on the phone so we would meet.
I was so overwhelmed I didn’t question him on any details of how it all came to happen. I don’t even know (or remember) what he said about me, or our friendship, to this woman.
When she spoke to me she sounded OK, nothing then that impressed me or raised a red flag.
I was probably more concerned about losing our friendship than anything else, especially now, plus I trusted him he would do the right thing, or so I thought.
Once we both settled down, the calls went back to the usual routine. But now we would discuss our emotions more now that my relationship ended and he was in one that he referred to as ‘a marriage without papers’.
We kept supporting each other and would tell each ‘we would be fine’. But such a statement was easier said than done.
We were now more than 10 years older, gone through too many rough moments and in a stage in our lives that anything we set out to do could go either way.
Gone were the years that you felt you could overcome anything that was thrown at you, that there was a way to make things better, that by putting your best effort, you would get what you hoped for.
It was a time of ‘let’s see what happens’ and of knowing that all that had significance to you could be lost in an instance; leaving you with scars that not even the best medicine could heal.