You will

You will wonder how you got here. You always thought of yourself, you were always told, that you are a strong independent woman. So how come you’re not fighting back. Why aren’t you doing what your head tells you to and just leave? Why are you still crying pathetic pools of tears and snot. Alone and scared and confused. You will not have answers. You will feel guilty. You will blame yourself for things that weren’t in your control, for actions you weren’t responsible for.

When it finally ends, you will not know it’s the end yet because you’ll debate going back so many times. But you will feel enormous relief to not live in fear. To not worry about what the neigbours might hear. To have some distance. To be around people who are helping you heal. And to not be trying so hard at something that seems doomed. You will think that the relief is temporary. Just a break before you return to your ‘real life’.

You will battle with anger that turns to rage when you start to realize that the things that happened never should have. There’s no reasonable explanation no matter how much you justify them in your head. You will experience heartbreak that threatens to split your chest wide open. You will grieve the loss of the life that you had been attempting to build with someone who was trying to destroy it. You will cry as loudly as the rain that thunders outside your window because you know that the noise will muffle yours. You will feel the toxins rise inside you in thick black waves.

He will say everything that you’ve ever wanted to hear. He will remind you of the good times, of how you fell in love with him. He will constantly question your decision to leave and this will make you question it too. You will talk to friends and family who will listen patiently and then turn you to a professional because, they will say, “we’re not equipped to handle this.”

You will go to a therapist. You will go back. Again and again and again. She will talk to you within the confines of a small room, no larger than six feet by six feet. She will ask the right questions. You will trust her. You will like her. It will be two years before you feel like you’ll be okay without her.

You will get hired to a new job. In a new country. You will take it and try to start fresh. You will not be able to go back to the apartment that you shared with him, not without running the risk of seeing him, so you will just leave the country with what you can find in your parent’s house. You will realize how little you need. You will send instructions on an international call as your family goes back to the apartment to clear your stuff out.

It will be difficult at first, so far from home and anything familiar. You will not understand the currency or language, it’s been a while since you’ve walked so much, the food will take some getting used to, you will not know anyone and will not have made friends yet. You will get unfairly fined an obscene amount of money for double tapping your transit card on public transport because you will not know better. And you will call home and complain about it. And you will ask God why he is doing these things to you. You will ask yourself if you are such a bad person that you deserve these horrible things. But you will persist because the money is good. Because it will give you options. Because this change is good for you, you will tell yourself. Because you will use this time to think.

But then, suddenly, “corporate restructuring” will take away your job. You will call home and bawl like a baby. You will think that your life is finished. A friend from home will call when you want to chat so that you don’t get charged unaffordable international call rates. You will have made friends like this. Friends like family.

Your life will be like a scene out of a movie for the next ten days as your salary is frozen with immediate effect, the office laptop is taken away, your visa will need to be cancelled by the local government before you can fly back home. The new furniture that you just bought from IKEA for the new apartment you just moved in to will need to be returned (you will get a full refund). Eventually, everything will fall into place and you will pack up all over again.

You will file for divorce. You will go to court. You will not know where the court building is and need to look for it first because you’ve never been to court, never needed to, until now.

You will see him in person for the first time in nearly a year. The man that you shared a home, a life and a bed with. He will not make eye contact. The judge will ask the reason for divorce. Incompatibility, you will say, like you’ve heard about celebrity divorces. It will sound like a line from a script. You will go home that night and eat warm shawarmas under an open sky.

You will clean your closets. You will want to declutter — Kon Mari, Live Lite by Coco, do a capsule wardrobe challenge. They will all make sense. You will try them like flavours of ice cream until you decide which one you like, which one is sustainable. Either way, you will throw away bags full of ‘stuff’, ‘memories’, going all the way back to your childhood because you no longer have space in your life for things that don’t serve you. But you will hold on to some things too.

You will get hired to another job. In a new city. You will take the job because home has started to suffocate you. Something you never thought would, could, happen. Everywhere will remind you of him. You will not want to meet mutual friends. You will need to escape.

You will not know what you’re in for. You will not know the city or anyone in it. You will not know where to buy stuff or how to look like a local. But you will learn. You will move in with strangers. You will share a bathroom and a kitchen with them. You will miss having your own bathroom. You will miss home.

You will love your work. You will fall in love with the city, with its people, with the sea, with its smells and its sounds. The city will shock you and make you laugh. It will never let you feel alone.

You will do things that you’ve never done before. Like staying out until 3am, eating pizza with friends. Sitting by the ocean, licking ice cream and clicking selfies. You will cut your hair. Short. Shorter. Because you know what they say about girls who cut their hair. You will become so much more independent. You will pay rent and bills with just the money that you make. The money you make will sustain you entirely for the first time in your life and you will enjoy the feeling that quickly becomes addictive. You will learn so many new things.

You will really like your job. You will be really good at your job. You will love the people you work with more. You will wonder where they’ve been your whole life. You will discover yoga. You will wonder why you haven’t been doing it all your life. You will love what it does for your muscles but you will love it more for what it does for your head and heart. You will pray more. You will believe in the power of prayer more than you used to.

You will go to work five days a week, eight hours a day, or more. You will do this week after week after week. Rain or shine, you will go. You will wonder why you are paying rent when you live in the office. You will not call in sick. You will not take a break. You will only take a rare holiday. You will not know it at the time but you will do this because you will not be ready to be alone with your thoughts.

Friends who come to visit, and when you visit home, will tell you that they see the ‘old you’ coming back. You will not be sure what this means. You will think they’re being polite. You will think they’re telling you what they think you want to hear. But then you will catch yourself laughing out loud, like you haven’t in a long time. You will not remember the last time you felt this free and happy. On second thought, you will. It was before him. Long before him. But you’re a different person now. Still laughing, but different.

Nearly two years will go by and you will sometimes wonder whether you made the whole thing up in your head because that life, that version of you, seems so far away. It will feel like another lifetime. You will not want to talk about that time like you once did, with an obsessive, compulsive need to talk about it. You will feel ready to move on, whatever that means.

You will no longer feel like a divorce defines you. You will no longer want that to be the narrative to your story. You will want to create a new story. You will no longer feel anger. You will no longer feel hate or resentment or mourn lost time. You will be indifferent. You will feel nothing.

And that’s when you will feel ready to feel again. You will realize that the past two years were just what you needed — the manic schedule and all the new’ness’ helped numb everything. But you will not be afraid to feel now. So for work reasons, life reasons and other reasons as well, just as a new life is coming together around you, like the fine pink threads of freshly spun candy floss, you will pack up to go home because it will seem like the right thing to do.

You will spend your last night in this city that has started to feel like home, someplace that you will feel like you belong, something you never thought could happen, dancing in a nightclub with friends, while a gorgeous singer that you will have a massive crush on will smile from the stage.

You will. Because you can.

You will come home and you will ache for what you left behind. You will wonder if your heart will ever be at peace. You will change into pyjamas and not plan to change out of them. You will wake up at noon. Past noon. You will loll under the covers. You will have a double bed to yourself so even if you stretch with both arms, you will still be entirely on the bed. You will not shower on some days. People who love you (mostly your mother) will tell you, that’s okay.

You will do nothing.

You will only go out to meet people you really want to meet. When you do go out, you will watch midday movies with your cousin and eat sushi dinners with your sister. You will spend time with your grandma and go on a road trip with your parents. You will do all the things that you came back home to do.

You will be pausing just so that you can enjoy life. Because you are so acutely aware that all you have is now.

You will follow no rules. You will do exactly what you want to do, when you want to do it. If you want to do it. No one will be able to tell you what to do. No one will ever be able to tell you what to do again.

You will travel. You will watch movies. You will hang out with friends. You will eat. You will write. You will read.

You will try to move to a new place for some time, to see if the life works for you, and because you will want to travel and see more of the world. You will do this because of an inexplicable, urgent need to go, which you will not be able to ignore anymore. You will be less scared of moving someplace new this time.

You will go. You will try to get a job. You will try to build a life. You will try to create a home. Again.

You will be told at different times and by different people that you will meet someone again. You will shrug your shoulders, unsure of how to react. You will not know whether that will be a good thing or a bad thing — a relationship. But you will not hold your breath.

Because you will know the value of the smaller things, which are, in fact, the bigger things. Giggling with your parents, talking to your sister, hanging out with your friends. Time. Health. Your own bathroom.

And you will just be grateful to be alive and able to enjoy the present.