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It’s official: my husband and I are separated.  I moved out last week, and after a few days of reflection, many tears, and long conversations, we have come to the conclusion that things aren’t right, haven’t been for a long time, and that the most loving thing to do is to supend and eventually end our union as man and wife.

Standing still as the dust clears and we take time and space to choose how to proceed legally, I am alone.  Not spiritually and not for lack of friends, but alone in my day to day.  There is no one waiting for me when I walk home from waitressing late at night.  There are no ready-made plans with other couples attached to each week.  I’m the mistress of my own schedule, my own moods, my own lone bowl of spaghetti at dinner time. 

Odd, how alone I felt before I moved out, and how alienating that loneliness was, as opposed to this natural, almost healthy alone- feeling.  It makes sense to be lonely when one is single; when one is lonely in a couple, pain ensues.

I have been furious, drained, grief-stricken, and excited, sometimes all in one day.  Separation and divorce, I am finding,  are events in the lives of couples that are experienced individually; that’s kind of the point, but one does not expect the unrequited echo of one’s own voice against the blank wall of a single-room rental.

In the midst of this alone-ness, this state that feels mostly good but often sad, I find solace in my survival instinct.  In writing bills and making my bed and running in the park that is now four blocks away.  In quiet and in my many generous friendships.  My self-care has strengthened like a muscle, my intuitive knowledge of my needs sharpened to a fine, sensitive point. 

Awake and aware, this is a snapshot of me at age 25, tears drying on my ruddy cheeks, a lone pioneer in the fresh landscape of the rest of my life.