1) Some days, you eat dip on the couch while Hallmark Christmas movies play on the TV because without them – the silence is deafening.

2) You will stumble over your stove, trying desperately to remember what you learned in college ... how to cook for one is an elusive and weird feeling that feels somehow unnatural. Were we not built to be two?

3) The doors are locked and the windows are locked and the hidden interior camera is on and when you go to bed at night – still, you will wonder if someone is in the basement.

(No one is in the basement.)

4) Even though your divorce is completely amicable, people will still choose sides and it will astound you. Friends you’ve known for years will ignore you in the grocery store, and when you reach out to ask how their mother is doing, the words will crumble in your throat because nobody told you – you don’t get to ask about that anymore.

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5) Leaf blowers. Lawn mowers. Cordless drills and weed eaters. You will buy them with the help of some random kid at Home Depot and you will find yourself yanking on the mower pull cord in the back yard – telling yourself you can do the hard things, and you will cry when the damn thing starts because...

6) Nobody told you you’d have to do every single thing.

7) You will watch older couples at malls and movie theaters and you will wonder how they made it past the seven year itch, and you will look at your friends and quietly wonder who will be next.

8 ) Not only will you find yourself surviving, but you will find yourself somewhere long after the day you sat in a cold chair in the divorce courtroom, and you will grow to love who you are in the right now.

9) You will surprise the holy shit out of yourself. Things you never thought of yourself doing will come at you like rain and you will rise. You will navigate new relationships, open your own dang door, and you will thrive.

10) You will meet yourself on a quiet street and you will wonder where in the world you went.

And the grace and the thanks will fall on your shoulders as you realize that you’d been there the whole time.

Now ... just now ...

You finally recognize yourself.

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