Childhood dreams fade away as years pass by, being dismissed and replaced by experiences, but childhood traumas stay with us to shape our choices in life, to forge us into who we really are.
I never realised how much my family problems have affected my ex-husband, turned into surrogate virtual friend, until our last Skype conversation when he told unexpectedly and without me pushing him to speak up, as I usually do, about his brand new resolutions. I was glad to hear that, after almost half a decade he was seriously thinking about his future. One of his statements though, stroke me like an electric bolt: "Never again, I will have a long-term relationship with someone with divorced parents". "This will reduce to half your chances of having one at all", I was thinking to myself and waiting him to stop talking, but he kept on going explaining why "a possible new she" will just bring in the partnership all the garbage of her failed family and will project upon him the uncertainties that her parents put upon her. I had suddenly acknowledged that he finally had muster the courage to talk to me, about me. Very still, almost guilty silent I recognised myself in the broken woman that had tormented him with emotional problems, coldness, control issues and failure of exiting the parental pattern for almost five years. To him all that was my poisoned dowry for our marriage. Now, when we are officially two strangers, in his heart I was strangely repossessed, with the “best friend and confidant” role. He said it openly: “I don't love you anymore, and don't feel responsible of managing (my) emotional garbage, so I am free”.
He is finally, free of me, and so he felt free, once again, to share with me his first five-year plan, the fact that he's enjoying taking ballroom dancing lessons, and all the little spicy details of this new life. He invited me to Paris for two days, just before he'll leave for Latin America and in the end he just asked me candidly: "So what do you say?" "Good Luck, my friend! Good Luck to both of us!"