Finally ...

Last month, I met with a divorce lawyer to finally get the ball rolling on legally ending my marriage. Initially elated with taking action, I spent the next few days kind of processing things in a way I hadn't before. It wasn't this fun, breezy thing I had imagined it would be - planning a black-veiled divorce party aboard a giant cruise ship and therapeutically burning Three's things. Instead, I was replaying all the experiences and emotions I'd felt over the last 7.5 years on full blast: the gaslighting, the blatant verbal attacks, the bizarre power plays, the lack of connections to anyone outside of him, etc. And it was in technicolor with surround sound, like I'd never left it. Because it is a part of me now, whether or not I like it.

Earlier this week, my rapist marched gleefully into my workplace to do his grocery shopping, unaware I'd spotted him. My stomach dropped, and I could not breathe for a few seconds. Thankfully, he never saw me, or if he did, he made sure to depart out of a different entrance. He was just Three 2.0, and I hated myself for ever opening up to him, allowing myself to be hurt even more than I was before.

Two days ago, I stood in my shower and cried, repeating, "I can't do this," over and over again until I could only mutter "can't can't can't can't can't" into the stream of hot water pouring down my face. My anxiety had been a steady presence for me for the previous several days, but it all just culminated in that one moment as I imagined what was coming.

Yesterday, I made an appointment with my lawyer for the final meeting before she drafts the divorce paperwork to send to Three. I sat in my car and cried, overwhelmed by relief, sadness, fear, happiness, and whatever emotion that came up.

And then today ... well, today, I'm going back to a place where some of the scariest, bleakest moments of my life took place. Three had a mental breakdown here, walking up and down the hallway and talking to invisible people he thought were trying to kill him. He finally revealed to me that he was an alcoholic because he couldn't maintain the lies he'd used to slowly peel me away from any other security and love that he couldn't really give me in the first place, because he'd been lying to me from the moment he met me, because he'd finally reached his breaking point. This was the last place I ever saw Kitkat and Bina, and Bitsy ran away after giving birth to six kittens in the closet by the front door. This was where I was truly alone, with no friends or family nearby and no safety net whatsoever. This was the final staging area of a five-year-long con that blew up in Three's face, although I'm still not sure what his final aim was.

To put it simply, I am not looking forward to returning to my home.

I'd made the plans to go to South Carolina a few days before meeting with my lawyer the first time, but I was uncharacteristically blase about the whole thing. Like, I was joking about the house and the fact that it is in foreclosure (yet another really fun story) and generally feeling nothing about it except maybe some mild irritation that I had to do it in the first place. And then I had a dream where I saw Bitsy, all mangled and scarred, Kitkat, terrified to approach me, and Three, just looming over me ominously and not uttering a word. It's like my body was in denial until it realized that, yet, I was actually going through with this, and it started freaking the fuck out, and it's like the rest of the universe is playing along.

It's a seven hour drive from Nashville, and I am making the trip with my parents to get the remainder of the stuff I left back in 2016. Even with my creepy/sad dream, I'm not really sure what I'm expecting to happen, if anything. I'm not even 100% sure what's there. I have a fairly good idea, since state housing is being exceptionally helpful, but they didn't have any pictures of the attic, where I'm assuming Three left a lot of stuff. What if I get there and it's literally just a bunch of destroyed stuff that I drove ten hours (including going down from Louisville to Nashville) to say, "Well, that can be thrown in the trash now?" That uncertainty certainly isn't helping matters.

I'm just so tired, so ready for this to be over. The end is in sight, thankfully, and in a few months, I will be able to close this chapter in my life. Logically, I know this is one of the last hurdles I need to jump over, but ... can't I just fast forward through these parts? That'd be nice.