The devil you know

He is behaving so perfectly now. It makes me feel like a crazy person; like I just imagined everything. Like I am insane for setting a bomb off in the middle of my life. In the middle of my children’s lives. It makes giving into his pleas for one last chance, for an ultimatum, seem so much easier than facing what is to come. My good friend reminded me that I was actually the one sitting on the ticking bomb for the last five years. Which is exactly how I have lived for the last five years. Like I was sitting on a bomb.

We had our initial divorce mediation meeting yesterday. They ran us through what the process would look like, what it would cost, how long it would take, etc. This is suddenly very real. More real than the original decision, more real than telling him. Even more real than trying to envision our lives without him; what comes next and how to get there. That was just imagining, this is a real plan.

This is like those slow-motion sequences in an action movie. The hero leaps off the yacht somewhere in the Mediterranean just before the bomb explodes. You can see the flames and plumes of smoke licking at her heels as her arms and legs churn in the open air; as she leaps into the abyss of the unknown. It is terrifying. It makes the devil I know seem like the better option.

But I’m doing it anyway.