in hindsight

There's a certain stretch of road on my way home from Costco that always makes me wax poetic. Maybe it's some kind of energetic vortex or something?

Anyway, today as I drove home with my trunk full of good things in mass quantities and my belly full of one of those famous Costco hot dogs, I found myself feeling deeply grateful for the divorce that was oh so traumatic for me so many years ago. Now that I think about it, I bet the profusion of silver-haired couples at the store was the trigger.

Way back when I got married at the tender age of 21, I fully expected that me and my husband would be one of those couples who would go grocery shopping together in our golden years.

Several people have confided in me that they knew before or even during their walk down the aisle that their marriage would not last. I was not one of those people. I harbored no shred of doubt that we would be together for a lifetime.

I think that's why the end of my marriage was so totally devastating to me. I felt like the proverbial canary in the coal mine -- one minute I was chirping happily, blissfully unaware of the impending lack of oxygen. The next, I was out cold.

It was me who felt compelled nine years into our marriage to tell him that my integrity required me to revise my wedding vows, because I could only promise to be as truthful as I could with him and myself as each moment unfurled.

It was me whose ability to commit to my husband until death do us part transformed so suddenly into for as long as we are growing and happy together, and if we happen to make it to forever one day at a time, that's fine with me.

So I couldn't blame him for being shocked and upset. Heck, I was too. This change was more than the end of our marriage -- it was the end of my innocence. It ripped my trust in myself right out from under me. It killed my forevers forever. There was no going back to the days when I could believe in myself or what I thought to be true.

Next month my son will turn nineteen -- the age his father and I were when we met. I look at him and his friends, and for the first time, I really understand why so many of my mentors and professors begged me not to get married so young. And at the same time, I know in my bones that everything happens perfectly and for a reason. I may not have given birth to these two amazing children had I heeded their advice!

In any case, when I got married a week after graduation I knew next to nothing about being independent as an adult. I had never lived alone or fully supported myself financially. I did not have any sense of my own resilience and competence. I did not know myself as an independent energy - I only knew who I was as part of a We.

I was not yet aware of the insidious poison that oozes slowly from every compromise. I did not know from experience that there really are a lot of fish in the sea, and that I could fall in love with so many of them.

I also did not know that I could rebound - that my heart could break and heal over and over and over again, and it would only become deeper and stronger in the process. I did not know that there would always be another man to love, and that I could enjoy each relationship so completely even when there were no guarantees of a future together.

If not for that divorce, and the subsequent breakups of the relationships since then, I still might not know these things. So if I could go back in time to comfort that terrified me who did not know if she could make it on her own, I would tell her without hesitation that she can, she will, and she will be glad she did.