Rating things that helped me get over my divorce

Last month, my ex-husband got engaged. The news had been spoon-fed to me over the last two years, dosed out slowly like medicine. By the time it finally arrived, I barely flinched. Like taking the last antibiotic when the infection is already gone. Necessary, but mostly a formality.

The announcement first came to me from myself, while I was still married.

It wasn’t a prophecy so much as a calculation I made while wrestling for years with the decision to leave. I didn’t need tarot cards to see the future. It was part of the deal I made with myself: in exchange for my freedom, I would need to steady myself for the speed of what might come next.

And when it did, it unfolded with the vague familiarity of a movie I’d already seen. Partly because my own brain had rehearsed it, and partly because it followed a pattern I’d watched play out again and again in divorced men once I started paying attention.

Besides my mind’s eye, I’ve had my daughters’ streams of consciousness to help with preparation. A steady flow of information about their lives, including nearly half they spend with their father.

“Daddy’s going to propose in the summer... in Chicago...”