My WordPress dashboard tells me I’ve started writing this post and saved it seven eight times, so I’m just going to write it and publish it and hopefully get over the blogging block that’s been plaguing me for a year.

I also don’t want my blogging archives to go from 2015 straight to 2017 because continuity.

It’s been exactly a year since the children and I sold our house. It took me a week to move; we took the necessities to a very small apartment here in town and the rest went into a storage unit. When we moved into that old house in the woods, I thought it was the forever house, but the only guarantee regarding forever is ironically nothing is forever. Closing the door and leaving that life behind broke my heart into a gazillion pieces.

My divorce was finalized without fanfare in the summer of 2015. I found out the judge had signed off on the dissolution of my marriage via an email from my lawyer while I was in the nail salon getting a pedicure. It wasn’t what I wanted, but I look back on it now and sadly I can’t really visualize it any other way. Three years ago, my ex was diagnosed with Bipolar 1 Disorder and began to struggle with addiction, struggle being a gross understatement. Our life at the time unfolded into an absolute utter nightmare, I wouldn’t wish what he went through and continues to battle on my worst enemy. I think perhaps that him walking away from us was because he loved us, at least that’s what I tell myself in a deluded way of thinking that allowed me to get out of bed in the morning for the first six months after he left.

I bought a lovely townhouse in May and moved again for the second time in less than five months. I know it is rather cliché to divorce and live in a townhouse, but look, anything to keep from raking pine needles and cleaning gutters.

My kids are doing amazing and I can’t believe how lucky I am, they are my favorite humans.

Looking at these photos and typing this, it seems like a lifetime ago. I guess there are just some chapters you just don’t read aloud. Or in this case, some blog posts you just don’t publish.

I’m not going to sugarcoat this mess, shit was bleak, and I am so very proud of us, my little family. I feel like we can finally exhale and we are exactly where we were meant to be. It is weird and freaking scary and looks so much more different than I ever imagined, but I do know that fun becomes fun, love becomes love, and I am grateful.

Happy New Year to us all.