~Divorce~

Most of my close friends know about this and why, I just figured that I finally had the time to sit down and put it on our blog, since I couldn't stand to see it sitting here looking like a happy family for all to see. We had been discussing it before he came home on leave in April and since so much has happened since then I just hadn't blogged it. I wanted to be respectful and not go blurting it out there until he had a chance to tell his family on his own.

To put it out there, no one cheated, took money or otherwise hurt each other in a traditional sense. It's been very slowly happening. In the last year and a half sense we went to the Temple, for me, I wasn't ready. I knew I wasn't. I allowed myself to feel pressured into going, and by my want to do what I had been raised to do. It was a mistake for me to go while my heart was so filled with angst and it so many questions. I had hoped that by going and doing on faith would just change me and I could be that "churchy " wife he wanted and deserved, that I had been told my whole life through that I had to be, to be a good wife, Mother, person in general.

That person wasn't me, and I was trying so hard to be it, that it would just naturally change and feel right. It never did, it felt worse and I felt like a shell of a person. Jon supported me through all of that and tried to accept my religious changes, but once those religious changes came about I felt freer to be myself. To not feel like my personality and who I am being edited 24 hours a day to fit a mold. I honestly believe that jon fell in love with me for who I "could be" and not who I truly am. When he met me I had a tongue ring, a nose ring, tattoo's, occasionally smoked and rarely drank, and yet when my past became my present again (because yes, I am a flawed person and I own that) he wasn't able to accept that. He spent 9 months of this deployment not knowing how to deal with it and shutting himself off and falling out of love with me before even mentioning something was wrong, and at that point it was just un-fixable.

If you can't love me for who I am, then why love me if I can only be what you WANT me to be?? I am not a perfect person and I never pretend to be and I don't look down my nose at my friends and family as they grow and change. I know that some of my friends have seen my changes as me trying to be someone I am not, but if these particular friends had known me before Jon they would have known this is who I was. Just know that despite the divorce, we love each other, just in a different way, we respect each other, we have handled this divorce almost completely with no arguments and being thought full of the only thing that matters in this. Our kids. We are a united front on parenting and frankly we care enough for one another that in a new relationship we are willing to openly tell the new person in the others life what a great spouse he or she was. Just because we aren't great together any longer doesn't mean we weren't once. He's a great man, and a wonderful Father. He is some one's "perfect" just not mine anymore and I am not his and we both deserve that happiness.

Thank you in advance for being my friends and not judging me for the changes I have made and for supporting me through this divorce. I don't much care if you LIKE the changes I make, I am finally happy enough with myself and inside myself for the first time in my life that I don't care what other people think of me. Don't get me wrong, it's great to have people like the things you do, but it's not necessary so long as you like it. As my friends and family, you don't have to like it, you just have to love me or feel free to leave.

It's been almost 11 months coming so I am in a really good place emotionally, just ready to have the papers done so I can start and new chapter in my life. Just as a ending note. I am NEVER ok with divorce while you're Soldier is deployed. There are too many factors at play that can affect your decision making. However these issues were in play before he went, and started before then, we aren't doing anything rash, we talk gently and softly and there has been a great deal of prayer and contemplation on the matter, and this is the best option for us. It's time to close one door and hopefully open another. He's no long MY "Soldier" to welcome home and love and I am no longer his. We've both moved on. Goodbye to "My Jon" I will always love you.