Sadness and loss

How can making the right decision make me so sad?

Choosing to divorce feels right. I mean it feels really right. It seems like the most obvious choice ever, something that will allow us to move on with our lives, get past the hurt and anger of the past. That makes me feel happy and hopeful that there is a way out of this hellhole we seem to be stuck in.

And yet, it is so very, very sad.

I feel already the loss of the relationship, the gulf that will exist between us, physical and otherwise, the sadness of not growing old together and or watching our children grow up, all in the same house. That is sad. I feel the need to simply state how, no matter how right or inevitable it is, this is the saddest thing that has ever happened to me or my wife.

The failure of a marriage is never something to celebrate, even if things are relatively better as a result of it. It represents the death of an ideal, a hope, a dream. This is something that should be properly mourned, cried over, become angry over. My heart aches for what could have been, what should have been. I wish the past was different, so the present could be, I would give anything for it to be.

But it isn't, and here we are.

So here's some free advice, worth every penny, to every unhappily married person out there: make it work, do whatever you can to avoid getting to this point, it really sucks.