Ground Zero – She is gone!

And almost with just the blink of the eye, she is gone. The last few days were extremely stressful, and I kept my composure until the last moment to not have the stress make a difficult situation go bad. My still wife, soon to be ex-wife, is now gone. She left to live with her parents in Germany. Behind we stay – my 15-year old son, our sweet dog Shelby, and myself – now being in charge of this ship.

Yes, I divorced from her. But what happened today – I am not talking about a “normal” separation where parents continue to live in the same city and see their kids on a regular schedule, but the fact that she left the country for good – leaving her son to grow up 5,000 miles separated from her. I tried to reason with her, but she is under the spell of her own mom and her mom won. Even more confirming to me that I made the right decision to file for divorce after so many years, but it breaks my heart for my son. Yes, the divorce is on me, but leaving him behind – that is on her. I am not taking responsibility for that decision, because that is a whole different league or ballgame. It is one thing to live separated and share parenting for a child, but leaving altogether … that is something very different.

The divorce is not even official. Yes, we notarized everything and the paperwork is with the court for signature. We also need to wait for July 23rd to come around, to meet the required 6 month + 1 day waiting period for the divorce to be final. And she is already gone.

My son and I had a lot of good talks over the last months and weeks and especially today. As much as I can tell – he is in a good spot for the moment, but one day is not every day. There will be lows coming and I have to mentally prepare myself for this to happen and to be there for him.

Well, here we are at the dawn of a new chapter in life. I am a “the glass is half full” kind of guy. I follow the mantra of “Don’t look back, we’re going that way” and really turn life events into something positive. This new chapter of my life is giving me an opportunity to reflect back on what mistakes I have made and how I can do better going forward and that is the ultimate goal: move on, move forward.