On The Occasion of My Twentieth Wedding Anniversary

This post was originally written June 18th, 2021

Tonight I am celebrating.

Tongue in cheek, I’ll tell you that it is my twentieth wedding anniversary, but my husband lives with another woman.

That is honestly true. But of course that’s not worth much of a celebration.

Or is it?

Of course I wish it wasn’t the truth, not the part where he lives there, but the part that we’re still married after a two and a half year separation.

In spite of all that, this day strikes me as one worth a bit of acknowledgment for all that I’ve been through in the last twenty years. I don’t know if I have words tonight to explain it at all. I look back at the woman I was at 35 years old, naively believing that marriage was the thing that would save me. The thing I was supposed to do as a woman. Be a wife and a mom.

I used to explain that I was born in the 60’s on the cusp of the Women’s Liberation Movement into a family system that held traditional expectations and religious beliefs. That is also honestly true, but it was more than that for me.

I was an undiagnosed Autistic woman who hung on every word he spoke to me as if it was the gospel truth. Apparently taking other people at their word fits the profile of a Neurodivergent person like me. Even if those words ring hollow after five or ten or fifteen years of hearing words that didn’t match the actions. And even if those words were only the promises I was speaking to my own heart.

So what is this celebration all about if what I’ve written sounds so poignantly sad?

It’s not about any specific memory or any particular milestone in my journey. It’s simply about the knowing.

I used to believe if I could just figure it all out, explain myself a little better, be more agreeable, less needy, more adventurous, smile more, expect less, contort myself into his world, anticipate all of his needs, while making sure he never had to go out of the way for mine, then everything would be okay. Better than okay. That one day we’d be one of those amazing redemption stories. You know the ones where people pull themselves up from impossible circumstances, out of the pit, after everyone else had given them up for dead? Look at us, two lost causes who somehow managed to finally get it right. Then I could finally be happy. Feel safe. Stable. Secure. Loved.

Turns out, that’s exactly what it is that I’m celebrating tonight.

At 55 years old, I was diagnosed Autistic. I finally understand why life has always been so hard for me. But that’s not all.

I know now that what I needed in order to be happy, feel safe, stable, secure, loved, was never going to come from him. He simply wasn’t capable of doing any of those things for me, and likely has a missed diagnosis of his own. But that’s not all.

I know now that what I needed was never going to come from any him, or them, or any person outside of me. And that knowing has changed it all.

Everything I thought I knew and thought I wanted has been torn down, trampled, flipped over, turned to dust at my feet.

And yet here I am finishing off this celebration dinner for one, getting ready to break open a bag of organic cherries and pour them all over my ice cream, and I know deep down to the core of my being, I am happy. I am safe. I am stable. I am secure. I am loved.

Tonight I am celebrating.