How do you turn it off?

Friday, I'll finally sign the papers. It's very bittersweet. On one hand it will be nice to just have it completed and to not receive any more "what is the hold up?" e-mails. At the same time, I still get really mad at the fact that I was never really given a chance to try and improve the marriage. Part of it seems like it has been a really long time. Josh decided not to come on December 15th and we had five months of what I called being "in limbo" where I was trying to be patient and trying to understand what happened, trying to improve in all of the areas that he said I was lacking and then at the end of April he said he wanted to go his separate ways. He filed in the middle of May. It does seem like a long time but in all of my research, it seems that most separations last about a year and a half and that typically most people had talked about separating before it happened and even lived together for a little while before deciding to try the separation. I guess that's what irks me the most is that I feel like I was doing all of these things that hurt him but he never told me. So, how does one improve if one does not know that he or she is doing something wrong?

On my way home today, the radio station that I listen to had a couples/sex therapist on. His main topic was how important honest, trust, and communication are in a relationship. I don't know why but for some reason when I heard this the tears just started to let loose. I had always thought we had this and before this happened Josh would always talk about how lucky we were that we had such a great marriage and understanding of each other. Yet, he would also say that I hard time communicating which I will admit that I do have difficulty showing emotions. However, he bottled all of his feelings for so long that it appears he wasn't honest and he definitely wasn't commuting which is quite unfortunate because I think things would have worked out much differently had he said anything. Pretty ironic consideringhe was unable to communicate in his marriage yet he is the communications coordinator for the MBAA association.

The therapist was also stating that the majority of marriages end within five years because people "give up" too easily when the first five years are the most tumultuous time of the marriage because of the high amount of stress. This stress includes combining debt, buying new homes, having kids, getting to know each other better, careers, schooling, in-laws, etc. We didn't have any kids, we bought and sold our house in CT, we did combine debt, we did both go back to school. He hated my family but neglected to tell me until he filed the papers, I loved his family and miss them dearly even though he thinks otherwise and thinks that I was just nice to them because that is who I am, not because I actually liked his family. He is quite wrong.

I also read more on how long it takes to "heal" from an unwanted divorce and as I've read before the average amount of time is 2-3 years. I'm hoping it's not quite that long because I've been going crazy and haven't been myself. I haven't watched tv for seven months (although, I think that's a good thing). This is the first week, I've actually started listening to the radio again while driving instead of just being lost in my thoughts, I've been late to almost everything except work (when typically I am extremely early for events and meetings). I haven't been able to be my happy go lucky self and I miss being that person. On the other hand, I have been able to worry a little less and I've met a few people that I would not have met had we not gone through this ordeal.

I'm guessing tomorrow won't be quite as fun either as I have to try to separate some more bills and then once the divorce is finalized I will have to go back and change my name on all of those bills. I'm still having a hard time changing my name and I wish Josh would understand that just because I hyphenated my name did not mean I was never in the marriage and never cared.

Hopefully, time will heal.