Divorce: A Journey to Total Happiness

Your plans lay shattered in a million pieces. You're walking around with a gaping hole smashed in your chest from the words that ripped out your heart. You can barely breathe. 
I remember those first three months vividly. I'd failed my marriage, my husband and myself. My dreams of being a perfect wife, of having the best marriage ever, all went perfectly to hell.
Despite how many times I'd fantasized about leaving my husband and how awful my marriage was every inch of my body felt flayed, bruised and every bone broken. Each nerve ending cried with a desperate need to be touched and held. Any vague reminder of my marriage, my spouse, was like getting kicked in the gut by a Clydesdale. 
Three years later I look back and know it was all worth it, every excruciating moment. 
The living torment led me to paths I never would have otherwise taken. Desperate to escape the thoughts torturing my mind I delved into sleep hypnosis, audiobooks on relationships, communication, psychology, anything and everything that would ensure never again feeling that way.
During that time came a day not so very out of the ordinary that changed my life. I was hanging out with a friend on Santa Monica Pier and caught my first glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel.
It was a sign, a very odd sign not so much in color, being black and white with a few numbers in red but it said the most peculiar thing. "Trapeze Classes Call Now!" The odd words sparked to life the long-dead child within me and something else.
Something I'd long ago suppressed. Desire. It started worming its way through my blood like an infection. 
It finally dawned on me I could do all the things I'd always wanted to do but never let myself out of trying to be practical, moral and grown up. All the things I'd sacrificed to make my father proud, my sisters respect me, and my peers take me seriously littered the years of my life like road kill. Pieces of self I'd cut off and let die until nothing but the skeleton of what others wanted remained.
For once owing no explanation to anyone and with no one who could tell me no in my life, I did the things I'd always needed to do to not just get through the day but to truly fully live. 
Pole dancing classes, singing lessons, hang gliding, writing a book, whatever took my fancy, I explored with a zest and motivation to improve myself in every way possible. 
Before marriage I would sometimes go on four dates in a single day, my Disney/Mormon brainwashed mind entirely focused on finding a "Prince." 
Divorce, on the other hand, gave me one purpose to stop the feeling of hot knives plunging and twisting deep inside, which morphed into a sacred journey to happiness. 
Raunchy music with lyrics like "I want to kiss you then punch you in the face" became my hymns, the apartment my husband never once set foot in became a temple of peace, audiobooks by Ph.D.s became my scriptures and friends poured into my life with healing love. Anyone and anything that did not serve or support me I cut from my life without remorse. I went into a type of seclusion where only the most trusted and kind were allowed to enter.
Now I am on the final and most difficult step of the journey. Claiming financial independence so I can continue exploring the hundreds of desires filling my bucket list.
Like right now I'm looking into becoming an advice columnist so I can share with others the wonderful things that changed me and my life of being a zombie in hell to a lion-hearted woman on a heavenly adventure.
Divorce was the start of my happily ever after, it was the first chapter in falling in love with life, and in loving myself. 

For starting the best chapters of your life check out these audiobooks!