“Am I doing the right thing?” I implored from behind sympathetic sunglasses, as tears streaked my already salt-stained cheeks.

She leant across the table. Her eyes turned to slits. ”What do you mean, Penny?” she asked – very slowly – certain she knew precisely what I meant, but not wanting to be presumptuous.

“Should I be getting divorced?” My lower lip quivered and I convulsed a little, deep within the lower parts of my soul.

She was bolt upright in a flash. “Are you fucken crazy!” That clearly was not! a question.

There are certain friends who should bill me for their time! And some who I’m sure would just like to medicate. Because, yes, I was emotional roadkill once again …

I have been working at the Chrysalis Academy (I need a whole blog post to expound on the magical synchronicity of that!) and taking hundreds of photographs to document the program. Well, one thing led to another and when downloading, I came across photographs of my (not-soon-enough) soon-to-be-ex-husband and myself. Already slightly emotionally unhinged – my usual state – I couldn’t help but slowly unravel, and when the above-mentioned friend called me for a drizz about her own emotional love affairs and despairs, all my seams popped open and I had to rush over to her place to merge with her river of tears.

The story goes on (and on) but I’ll take you on a short-cut to a long body-surf followed by the above-mentioned conversation – which clearly confirmed my momentary insanity – and a crack which needed mending … but not until I had found the cause.

And as the processing began and I started to run too much, work too hard, forget to eat … and then deal with a stuffed Achilles tendon and a fever blister that usually signals my body’s plea for help, a fragile Penny limped through the week, unable to fathom what exactly had mowed me down.

And then BAM! One more prescriptive look through the photos and I realized I wasn’t so much looking at Him … or even Us … so much as Me. And it wasn’t really Me at all. And that was it! That was the BAM! moment. I had been grappling with the notion that perhaps … despite the wailing and crumbling and running and borderline anorexia … I hadn’t yet mourned the loss of my marriage. But Oh, So Far! from it. I was totally and completely over my marriage, over my husband, over the branding and everything that came with the package. What I was really mourning was the Me that I couldn’t find in the majority of those photos. What I was really mourning was the fact that I had tucked so much of myself away for so long that I didn’t recognize Myself as Me.

And then I was back. The Me I had rescued had taken off another cloak. Where before, the moments of sanity were short and sweet, the lapses now form the blips on the evening news. I came back and I came back stronger. And stronger is good when you still have an albatross to rip off your neck. I am finally done with allowing myself to be punished for not being the Me that fitted His profile of the ideal Us. I am done allowing myself to be punished for not wanting to be married to Him anymore. I am done with the guilt.

I may still have the training wheels on, but I am Me. And that’s soon going to just have to be enough.