Aftermath

Divorce is a weird experience. 

For one thing, it can mean different things to different people. 

For some it feels like defeat; for others, freedom. For some, it is a time of heartbreak and devastation; for others, a time of celebration and rebirth. It can be amicable and even unremarkable; or, it can be acrimonious and dramatic. 

Sometimes, divorce is many things to a person—either all at once, or day-by-day. What I mean by that is that for some people, they can feel both negative and positive feelings toward their divorce simultaneously. And for some people, how they feel varies from day to day, week to week, month to month, etc; sometimes they feel positively about it, and sometimes they feel negatively. 

The thing about divorce is that nobody plans for it to happen. (The word “nobody” here is used hyperbolically; I’m sure there are some people out there who marry with the intention of divorcing, for a variety of reasons either unhinged or calculated, or perhaps both). 

Nobody gets married and vows to be with a person for life, while knowing in the back of their mind that they’re lying. For most people, marriage is sacred. It is something they only want to do one time with one person. Divorce is something that happens to those who don’t think things through, act on impulse, choose poorly, or are careless with others. It’s something that deserves sympathy, that people look at and think, “okay, how can I avoid doing that? I don’t want to be that person.”

But the truth is that divorce is, well… complicated. It isn’t good or bad; it is both and neither. 

For me, getting divorced is something I never in a million years thought I would do. Like, ever. It’s also something that I am continuing to process, over two years after separating from my ex, and after getting remarried. Being married again kind of feels like starting to read a new book before you finish the one you were reading before… but you were kind of over it, and this new book is pretty great, so it’s okay? And yet, the nagging feeling of knowing you didn’t finish reading that book is always there. (Or is that just me?)

Long story short, I haven’t finished processing my divorce even though I’m married to someone else now. Which is weird, but also kind of makes sense. I was with my ex-husband for 13 years, and married for ten. That is a long relationship to change so dramatically, and processing that is bound to take some time. For all I know, I’ll be processing it for the rest of my life. I mean, I hope not, but still. 

When I think about my divorce, I realize that there’s a difference for me in how it happened versus why it happened. If someone were to ask me why I got divorced, I would have to choose which version to give them. 

How it happened is that we became polyamorous, and through that I realized that my feelings for him were platonic. I fell in love with someone else, and my ex was not able to accept that person into our lives as fully or as quickly as I wanted him to. Even though we’d both agreed to be polyamorous, in practice it was a very exciting experience for me but a very unpleasant experience for him. Losing my romantic interest was painful for him (I think I can safely assume), while for me it was painful to be separated from my new love. These factors caused conflict between us and led to both of us pulling away from the relationship. It came to the point where we couldn’t find happiness while staying married. 

How it happened makes me look like the “bad guy,” and that perception has messed me up a lot emotionally. Because I know that I didn’t do anything wrong, but from a simplified perspective, it would seem that I left my husband for somebody else. It looks like I threw away my marriage for something new and exciting. That voice in my head tells me that I’m the villain. 

This is why I feel the need to frequently emphasize that I could have and would have stayed with my ex, if only he had been able to support my new relationship. Perhaps that doesn’t make sense to people who aren’t polyamorous, but it is what it is. I would have done the same for him. In fact, I was his biggest cheerleader in dating! I truly wanted him to find a person who could give him what I could not, so that we could stay married and both be happy and fulfilled. 

Why it happened is different, I’m beginning to realize.

As I mentioned, while I was falling in love he was going through emotional upheaval. I was changing and discovering a life of my own apart from him. Because I was changing, he needed to change too. In the end, we were two very different people who could have stayed married if we’d wanted to, but the reality is that we didn’t want to. 

I find it annoying that it sounds like a cliché that “we both changed” and “we grew apart.” Because it’s not just as simple as that. But at the same time, it kind of is. 

We are different people now. Throughout the 13 years we were a couple, we obviously changed a lot as well. I always believed we could change together, and that’s what we did for all of those years. But when everything was falling apart, we both were changing in ways that specifically and by necessity pulled us away from each other. We were becoming our own people, finally. And if I’m honest, all of me changed like midnight. The people we became didn’t make sense as a couple, and so we walked away. 

When we decided to divorce, it was extremely… uneventful. It was a calm, cool, and collected kind of conversation. No anger, so hurt feelings (at least that were expressed), certainly no yelling. We even had one last cuddle. 

Looking back at that always makes me sad. What we lost was something big, and amazing, and rare. All of a sudden, we realized it was already gone and we were holding onto nothing. But at the time, I wasn’t sad. How could I be sad? The people who had that amazing marriage no longer existed. I wasn’t her. So, I had nothing to mourn. 

After the processing I have done thus far, I have found reasons to mourn. I mourn for that person who I used to be, who had that amazing love story, who felt safe and secure and settled. I mourn for all the love we unraveled; we still care deeply for each other, but obviously the type of love has changed. I mourn for how easy it was to spend time together, how much I enjoyed being around him, and how I never got tired of being with him. I lost my best friend, not just my husband. 

It may sound superficial, but I also mourn for the life I gave away. We had built our dream house together, and I loved that house. I loved our neighborhood and our city. I loved the kids’ school, and I loved the rhythm of our lives. Leaving the place I loved, that felt like home, was hard for me. I had to mourn for that as well, and still do. 

It’s strange to think that people can change so much, that they can be the same person and yet not. It’s hard to know how to be around them. When you’re with a person who you have known for so long and been through so much with, and they start to become someone that you don’t recognize, it is extremely disconcerting. You miss that person, but how can you say that when they’re right there in front of you? It’s hard to process. 

Getting divorced when I thought I was above that was humbling. Now, being married again, I have to balance my cynicism with optimism. It would be naïve to say that it is impossible I would ever get divorced again—even though that is how I feel! I guess the difference now, and one of the biggest lessons I learned, was that I have the power to choose what happens in my marriage. 

Of course, I only have control over myself, which is only half of the equation. But the point is that I have the power. It isn’t fate, it’s a choice. I know that I chose to divorce my ex. I know that I could have chosen differently. I know that I do not want to choose that ever again. I also know that I might change my mind about that someday and feel tempted to leave—but even if that happens, I can still choose to stay. If my marriage is as sacred to me as I say it is, then I will choose that even on the days I feel differently. And I am determined to prove that it is.

I’m very lucky with how things have turned out. My ex-husband and now-husband get along really well, and I have a good relationship with my ex as well. There is no animosity. On my husband’s side of things, everything is harmonious with his ex-wife as well. The four of us make up a sort of co-parenting chain, and it feels nice. Our blended family has blended smoothly, and I am happy with that. 

So, the aftermath hasn’t been so bad, on the surface. Emotionally, though? That’s a different story. It just goes to show that nobody goes through divorce completely unscathed. We bear the scars, whether we like it or not. 

Five Months of August

Dogs seem to come and go more frequently in my life than most. I’ve had 12 dogs as an adult. Three were rehomed, four passed away, and one went to live with my ex-husband. Currently, I have four dogs. 

Dezi was my husband’s dog before I met him, and I adopted Pepper when I separated from my ex. Then we got Nugget as a puppy in December of 2022. Three dogs felt manageable, probably because two of them are small and Dezi is older and less needy than a younger dog. But I felt like there was something missing. It seems as if my heart is continuously expanding to want “one more” thing to love and care for. And so, I got the itch for another dog. 

I found myself thinking of my first dog that was my own (rather than a family dog growing up). His name was Marley, and he was very special. He was an American Pitbull Terrier mix, absolutely gorgeous, incredibly gentle and tolerant, and just overall a very good dog. His only vice was separation anxiety, which was something we struggled with for most of his life. But it was worth it to me because Marley was amazing. 

He passed away at the age of 13, and since then I’ve had five pitties—that is, pitbull-type breed dogs. First there was Macy, who I actually got as a puppy before Marley passed away. She was what I referred to as my “soul dog.” While I don’t think there’s only one dog in a lifetime who can speak to a person’s soul, I do feel that some dogs are more special than others. At least, that has been my experience. For me, Marley and Macy were my first two soul-dogs. They held special places in my heart. 

Sadly, as Macy grew up she began to have unpredictable bouts of aggression towards other dogs. These were dogs who she grew up around, as well as others. And when it happened, she went for blood. One minute she could be innocently playing or cuddling with one of her doggie siblings, and the next minute something shifted and she was trying to kill them. We never understood why it happened, but we did everything we could to fix the problem. We did extensive training, and she responded very well. But, because her aggression wasn’t a habitual behavior but random episodes, training didn’t stop these attacks from happening. 

While I never worried that Macy would hurt one of her human family members intentionally, she did bite my ex when he tried to separate her from one of our other dogs during an attack. His injury was fairly serious, and we began to consider our options. We tried to rehome her, but a pitbull with aggression issues is nearly impossible to adopt out. After our second professional training program with her, which was followed shortly after by another attack in which my ex was once again bitten—we knew it was time to put her to sleep. 

Having to put a perfectly healthy, young, sweet dog to sleep was horrid. But we knew that it wasn’t safe to continue to have her around. It was heartbreaking to say goodbye to her.

The two other pitties I had with my ex were Moosey and Buddy. We got Moosey as a puppy, and he was very sweet and overall a good dog. For our family at the time, though, he turned out to be too much of a handful for us. So when my parents offered to take him as a trade for their older dog, Buddy, we jumped at the opportunity. Buddy is tolerant, gentle, playful, and loyal—a great dog to have in a family with young children. He wasn’t as great of a dog for a couple who liked to travel a lot, which is why my parents wanted to trade. We were all satisfied with this decision, and it worked out great. 

In my current marriage, I’ve had two pitties. One of them is brand new as of this post; we just got a puppy, who we’ve named Forrest. But before Forrest, there was Auggie. 

As I mentioned earlier, I began to feel a pull to get another dog this past summer. I was thinking a lot of Marley and how I wished I could find another doggo like him. Well, I looked, and I found August. 

August—Auggie for short—was also incredibly gorgeous and sweet. He was super tolerant of the kids, the cats, and other dogs. Nothing seemed to bother him. His demeanor was exactly what I knew pitbulls could be, at their very best. I loved him from the day I met him.

We adopted him from a couple who was looking to rehome him. He was about ten months old when we adopted him, and they said they were rehoming him for financial and family health reasons. When they said goodbye and we took him with us, they were visibly upset; it was clear that they loved him very much. But what happened in the month following our adoption of him made me suspicious that they gave him up for a very different reason. 

At his initial vet checkup, he had some unusual blood test results for his liver. We ended up doing many follow-up tests, the most serious of which was a very expensive imaging procedure. Finally, we had our answers. Auggie was diagnosed with multiple liver shunts. What this means is that his liver started growing new pathways for blood to be diverted from passing through. This meant that his liver was not serving him well—and the naturally occurring waste and toxins that it should have been filtering out were staying in his body and slowly poisoning him. We also learned early on that his liver was undersized, and when we learned about the shunts, I suspected that his unusually small liver was the reason they developed. 

Unfortunately, while congenital liver shunts (ones that a dog is born with, which are usually just a single shunt) are surgically repairable, multiple acquired shunts (ones that a dog develops, which can be many) are not treatable. The only options for treatment were basically palliative; he was put on a special diet and given a few different medications to help slow the process of him dying. After a couple of months of me making homemade dog food for him, I couldn’t do it any longer. The expense and the time was too much for us. We took him off the special diet and medications and decided to enjoy him for as long as we would have with him. 

I suspect that his previous owners knew about his condition. The prognosis for this is bleak; dogs with this condition can live up to two years, at the very most. The majority don’t get even that long. And I understand why his previous owners might not have wanted to be the ones to lose him that way—or the ones to make the decision to end his suffering. 

Ultimately, we had five months with August. During those months, we took him on camping adventures and gave him all the love we could. We watched and waited for the signs that he was beginning to feel the effects of his disease more acutely. 

The week that we knew it was time was rough on him. He had vomiting and diarrhea, sometimes with blood in it, appetite loss, and general malaise. We could tell that he was just not feeling good. I came home one day and he ambled over to me in his usual “Eeyore” way and he put his head on my lap and looked at me in a way that told me it was time. It felt like he was telling me that he was ready, that he was tired and done. We took him to the vet to put him to sleep that night. 

Saying goodbye to Auggie was painful—as it always is. It is an unpleasantly surreal experience to watch a dog go from alive to gone, just like that. They have no idea what is coming. They are so innocent and trusting, and as human caretakers for them we have to be the ones to decide when to end their lives to prevent needless suffering. It feels like murder every time, to me. I have to constantly remind myself that I’m doing the right thing, the loving thing. 

In the weeks after losing August, I have continued to grieve. I’m still not done, and I don’t know how long it will take until I can think of him and smile instead of breaking down into tears. But one thing that I believe with dogs is that when you lose one, it gives you space to take in another. I debated whether getting a fourth dog (again) was a good idea. I knew that our lives would be simpler if we just stuck with the three that we already have. But, I also knew that I needed a pittie in my life. 

Three weeks after losing Auggie, we found Forrest posted online for adoption. We went to get him that same day. We’ve only had him for a few days now, but already we know that we found a really special one. He is definitely a puppy—mischievous and untrained—but for a puppy, he is incredibly easy so far. He is so affectionate and smart and just plain cute. He’s already captured our hearts.

I know that Forrest will never replace Auggie. Auggie will always be special to me, and I will always miss him and think about the years we should have had with him. But it does bring me a bit of comfort to know that without August leaving us so soon, we would not have found Forrest. The circle of life continues. With any luck, we will have many wonderful years with Forrest. And for that, I have August to thank.

Of course, this post is dedicated to my Auggie boy. I miss you, puppers. I love you and can’t wait to see you again at the rainbow bridge. Until then, have fun running around with Marley and Macy! 

Hello, Forrest.