And then just as their divorce became final, the house sold. We had thirty days to find an apartment, which caused me incredible amounts of stress. It was just an incredibly bad time for it all to happen. My health wasn’t great. I was in the middle of writing final papers and taking final exams and I was about to start an intensive six-week period where I’d be taking three accelerated classes. And I just hate the whole process of moving. Plus we had to do it on an incredibly accelerated time schedule; I had been expecting 60-90 days when the house sold; 30 seemed insane. However, I was incredibly happy that we were moving out of there. Everything about that house reminded me of her; it was inevitable. They had redone the bathroom together, picked out art, decorated; she was everywhere I looked. I needed to give our relationship a fresh start, one that wasn’t mired in the remnants of his marriage and finding our own apartment and doing all of those things ourselves was exactly what I wanted and we needed.
We’d spent the previous few months picking up “stuff” for our anticipated new residence. New dining room, living room, and bedroom furniture. Art, decor, knick-knacks; everything that we needed to make our new place feel like it really was "ours". We looked at several apartments together and I wasn’t thrilled by any and then BF went back to a listing that we’d missed seeing because of a late season snow storm. He went alone because I was sick and came home beaming; he’d found “it.” We scheduled another appointment to see it the next day and I loved it too. It was a second floor two bedroom with a huge living room and master bedroom, a great room for the Little Man, tons of closets, cool angles, great windows, and we’d be the only tenants in the building as both of the commercial spaces downstairs were empty. We put in applications that day and anxiously sat anxiously hopeful through the weekend. We got the call the next Tuesday; it was ours.
We signed a lease almost immediately, started moving in and that was that. We love it here. Five months later it’s looking and feeling like home. We’re still crazy in love. Marriage is on the horizon, though not close on the horizon. I’ve got a new job with a boss who lets me change my hours as my health and school schedule requires and pays me enough that I only have to work part-time. And there’s a sweet Little Man who has gone from a crawling baby to a chatting little boy and tells me he loves me all the time, now knows the ABC song that I sang to him every night before bed and digs deeper into my heart every day.
We aren’t without our share of problems. Living with someone who has a chronic, invisible illness is not easy. His unhealthy, unfulfilling, uncommunicative marriage left him with some wonderfully frustrating habits. Dealing with a future-MIL that still has dinner with the Ex-Wife and really hasn’t accepted her son’s decision or my presence is trying. Guilt is still an issue. Even though we both know that it was the right thing for everyone and that a divorce now, rather than five years from now, is probably the best thing for the Little Man, breaking up a family is not something that you get over in an instant, but in the words of The Beatles, “it’s getting better all the time.” We love each other, more than anything in the world, more than either of us ever thought was possible, more every day.
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