- My expectations of what my life would look like after divorce were very high.
- My real-life experience was nothing like what they show you in rom-coms.
- I’m learning to live on my own, and I have grown and evolved since my divorce.
In the realm of romantic comedy, every ending is also a beginning. This seems to be especially true regarding the ending of a marriage.
In chick flicks and rom-coms, divorce is often portrayed with both tragedy and promise. It’s the ending of an era and the beginning of an exciting new chapter filled with self-discovery, spontaneous adventures, wild nights, revenge bodies, and, eventually, a new romance.
It’s possible that I have watched too many of these films. My post-marital expectations were very high. Yet, a little over a year after my real-life divorce, I can confirm that reality doesn’t follow quite the same script as the movies.
Life after divorce is messy
Real-life healing isn’t a quick montage for the screen; it’s a messy, sometimes empowering, and sometimes debilitating process. That’s not to say that I haven’t experienced some of the quirky yet meaningful encounters Hollywood likes to present on screen, with each one contributing to my personal growth.
In the movies, those moments always lead to an inevitable happy ending. After a year on my own, I haven’t quite found mine.
I’m not madly in love with someone who I met in a bookstore and who magically heals all the broken parts of me. I haven’t even gotten to a second date with any of the few men I deemed worthy of meeting in person. I’m not gainfully employed, either, having left a well-paid full-time job to return to freelance writing just weeks after deciding to leave my now ex-husband.
I did move nearly 2,000 miles across the country, chasing a fresh start in a brand new city (a very main character decision). However, I arrived only to discover that I’d accidentally packed a lot of my hurt and anger in the dozens of boxes that came with me.
Comparing my journey to a movie will lead to disappointment
Hollywood loves exaggerating the ease and romance of this phase of post-divorce reinvention. It’s not easy and not terribly romantic most days. There is grief at the end of a relationship, and we all have to grieve in our own way — and in our own time. Comparing my own journey to the ideal I saw in films only led to disappointment.
I have to give the movies credit, though. There is one thing it gets right: the idea that new beginnings are possible.
In the aftermath of my own personal heartbreak, I have experienced unexpected joy, laughter, and, yes, even a revival of self, just as my favorite films promised. At times, these good moments have even felt oddly cinematic — aided, at least once, by using a pair of noise-canceling headphones and a killer Spotify soundtrack.
For the first time in over a decade, I’m learning to live on my own again. My new apartment is filled with carefully selected furniture, artwork, knickknacks, and a bright pink rug that my ex-husband would have hated.
I’ve evolved as a person
Every short-lived romantic connection I’ve experienced over the last year has taught me something about myself, whether revealing the parts of me that aren’t yet healed or showing me the ways that I truly have grown, evolved, and changed.
On a recent trip to urgent care, a friend’s name replaced my ex-husband as my emergency contact. She’s one of several friends I’ve made here, people who have seen me in some of the best and worst moments of the last year despite our relatively short acquaintance.
In a particularly rom-com-esque turn of events, I have also become a steady regular at a bar where all the staff and some of my fellow patrons know me. The regulars who don’t yet know my name call me “typewriter girl,” thanks to the old manual typewriter I sometimes lug onto the wooden bartop to write.
There are still days that I wish I could summon the powers of Hollywood to script an Oscar-worthy ending to this chapter of my life, days that I’d love to call for the credits with a satisfied flourish.
Real life isn’t quite as tidy as a screenplay, and this film won’t be wrapping up anytime soon. My life is bigger, more complicated, less predictable, and more nuanced. It can’t be contained in a cinema or a neat, 90-minute package. It keeps going, expanding, growing, and changing.
That might be what makes it even better.
