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Business News/ Opinion / Blogs/  DANCING DIVORCEE: Before you break free, you must break
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DANCING DIVORCEE: Before you break free, you must break

For a lot of us divorcees, the day the judge pronounced our marriage dissolved was our independence day

The freedom to live a normal day without a trace of sadness, guilt, incompleteness and anger is one of my favourite blessings of a divorce. Photo: ThinkStock (ThinkStock)Premium
The freedom to live a normal day without a trace of sadness, guilt, incompleteness and anger is one of my favourite blessings of a divorce. Photo: ThinkStock
(ThinkStock)

For a lot of us divorcees, the day the judge pronounced our marriage dissolved was our independence day. For some, it was a hard-won fight, where negotiations, accusations, strategies, deviousness had played their roles and there were clear winners and victims.

For others like me, it was a quiet thud that suffocated the reason to live and this freedom felt like a hollow thing, a cup awarded when no race had been run.

I began to enjoy the euphoria of this freedom only much later. In fact, almost a year later when I finally got comfortable wearing the skin of a divorcee.

Today, I have the freedom to:

Live in MY house. To stay in a place, which I can call home with joy. A cave I can return to eagerly, my happy corner, my comfort that is waiting for me no matter where I go. There is no heavy sadness these days that descends into me when my footsteps turn towards home.

Respect love. We divorcees know love can be mangled, tortured, traded, yelled-at, trampled upon and wilfully destroyed. We have a precise idea of its value for we know the suffering its absence can bring

Chase Perfection. I have probably taken one of the rockiest paths available to find a good life. Whether I will ultimately succeed in doing so isn’t important. What matters is that I tried. I broke free of the bonds that bound me to a life that mocked me with its emptiness.

Not Hate Men. Though we are an overpopulated world, I definitely do not want to hate one half of our species. The divorce has freed me from blaming all men for my unhappiness. My father, friends, cousins have shown such exemplary kindness and strength through these times, that I have come to understand, not all men are destructive forces, just some are.

Enjoy An Ordinary Day. Those of you who haven’t endured the mind-numbing death of living in a house where the love has gone, will have no idea what this means. The freedom to live a normal day without a trace of sadness, guilt, incompleteness and anger is one of my favourite blessings of a divorce.

It is true what the thinkers have said, freedom does come with responsibility. Every waking day I am aware of how much I have given up to get this life I am living. If I let it slide back into mediocrity, unhappiness, compromise and ennui, I will not be doing justice to this hard-earned independence.

The final proof that getting the divorce was the smartest thing I did will be when I start living a life that is better than the one I had when I was married.

I have broken free of the worse half (according to me) and now my solo self will have to soar towards an independence that is meaningful and worthy of the fight it took to get here.

For only then will this freedom become the sweetness it promised. For only then, can I wish myself a ‘Happy Independent Life’.

Dancing Divorcee is a weekly happy, sad, funny, obnoxious blog on the misadventure called divorce. It will appear every Thursday. Arathi Menon is a dancing divorcee who also blogs, writes, tweets and repairs brands.

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Published: 15 Aug 2013, 05:16 PM IST
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