The overriding result of war is mass destruction and loss of life. No matter who’s fighting or who is defending. Divorcing an abusive partner is tantamount to war. You don’t put yourself there, he does. That’s his game – if-I-can’t-have-you-and-have-things-my-way-I’ll-destroy-you-and-everything – mentality. But you find yourself having to fight to defend yourself, stay alive even and in so doing you can so very easily but unknowingly cause harm to yourself. You get so distracted by ‘the battle’ that you forget to take care of the fundamentals of rebuilding your life. You get so busy writing statements, filling in forms, attending court sessions, trying to find answers to legal questions (because you cannot afford solicitor bills) on the internet, that you forget to make that all-important new business phone call, or to write the next chapter of the booklet you’re doing for a client so now it will be next month before you can invoice them for it. Your earnings are nowhere near what they should be because your time is spent elsewhere. You go to bed at night exhausted but with little to show for it and you wonder – am I doing the right thing? Is there any way I can limit myself to how much I fight so that I don’t allow it to take up so much time? Or is now the right time for me to fight with everything I have – fight for my life almost – hoping and praying that when the battle is over I can apply myself to rebuilding my life then and do it more quickly and easily because it’s peace-time?

If I’d chosen the war, I could end it anytime I liked. But I did not. It has been thrust upon me by him. I feel I have no choice but to fight because he is hurling missile after missile in my direction – and some of them are aimed directly at the bits of my life I have rebuilt and if I do not deflect them or destroy them before they hit, they will destroy me – again! Then there is him. How much should I try and destroy him? Because if I do that he wont be able to fight me anymore. I have ammunition, plenty of it, which until now I was happy to sit on and keep for posterity but now I wonder if I should use it(?). My therapist says I am still being “too helpful” (not specifically about my ex-husband but in life in general) and when he said it, it really resonated, like a tiny Buddhist temple bell – tingggggggggggggggggggg……..But I am a peacemaker, a people-pleaser. That’s my natural instinct. Having to change that and adapt a warrior stance is hard for me but that’s what I am being ‘asked’ to do. That’s what this requires – and so, I’ll do it.