Looking back, I never thought this is where I’d be. Divorced, in my mid-40’s, for all intents and purposes, without parents at this point (more on that later). And yet, here I am. Is this the way life was supposed to go?

I don’t know if I believe in the whole trope of “everything happens for a reason”. I think sometimes life is in fact just carefully held together chaos, and we happen to just make the best or sometimes worst of the situations as they present themselves to us. I do know that when I met my ex husband I had four very different paths I could have taken.

One path involved an old high school flame, I thought at the time, and for a long time after, that he was the love of my life. But choosing him would have taken me away from the state I lived in, the one I needed to be in to support my mother who was ill. It was a bridge too far in my mind, I’d been conditioned to the thought that I needed to stay close, to take care of her, and so the thought of moving hundreds of miles away in the name of anything, much less love, was untenable.

The second was an older man, he could have provided me with a good life, support and all the things I would have ever needed. But at that point in his life he’d already had multiple marriages and multiple children and I didn’t want any part of that level of chaos. That life probably would have been fine, probably would have turned out differently, but I couldn’t see myself in it.

The third was an ex, younger than me, immature, but I do believe he loved me, and I do believe that he thought I was the love of his life. Later, after we were both married to other people he drunkenly admitted to me at a party that he was woefully unhappy, and begged the question of me “what was there to do”. Like I’d agree to run away with him and leave both our chosen lives behind

And then there was J. In him I thought I had safety. was he the absolute love of my life, I don’t think I ever really felt that way. He was a choice, stable enough, young enough, relatively unburdened. And if I’m being truthful all these years later, I thought he’d never leave me. I thought he knew what he had and wouldn’t walk away from it. He was safe. And I was ready to settle down, and start a family and the prospect of starting all over again in the dating world seemed too daunting, and would have pushed those imaginary timelines we all have in our heads out to the point where perhaps children would have been impossible. That’s the one thing about being a woman, you always , always , have in the back of your head a ticking clock, warning you that the end is neigh, and your chance for being fertile is always fleeting, one month closer to being gone with every cycle. So I picked him, the safe bet. Despite the yellow and eventually red flags that I silenced in my head thinking, it will be ok. This is the right choice. How very wrong I was.