Today is my birthday, but I woke up thinking about another birthday, nearly six years ago. It was the 40th birthday of my dearest friend -- my ex-husband, Jon, who was, at the time, still my husband. We had been separated for five months after 13 years of marriage (and 14 years of couples' therapy, but that's another story).
I was throwing Jon a small celebration for our closest friends - people who had been with us every step of the way along our journey. They had watched us fall in love; they had toasted us at our wedding; they had been overjoyed when our son was born eight years earlier; they had felt sorrow when our marriage was breaking up. Tonight they were here to support Jon, who had received his three-month chip of sobriety from the 12-step program he enrolled himself in not long after we separated. Jon was working hard to rid himself of a drug dependency and deep depression that had plagued his life since he was an adolescent.
For most of our marriage, even our closest friends hadn't known about the serious struggles Jon and I had faced over the years: Jon's drug use was subtle; my co-dependency was clever. But our love for one another was real and powerful enough to see us through each new hurdle, right up until it couldn't anymore.
We held onto our friendship and respect; oh, it faltered now and then, but a funny thing happened after our divorce -- Jon sought serious help on his own, and I learned to let go, concede control and love from a distance.
That night as we celebrated Jon, it was clear that just as we had shared the struggles of our marriage, we shared this accomplishment, too. It was all the more special because of Jon's 40th birthday - a milestone he had always believed he would never see.
When Jon was 13, his father died at just 37 years old. Jon lived the next 27 years believing that he, too, would die young. There was nothing in Jon's dad's DNA that would support this fear; his father died of a brain aneurism - what doctors often call a medical fluke. But to Jon, the science of his father's death didn't matter; Jon simply believed he would follow his father to an early grave. It may be one of the reasons he tempted life with drugs; his father's death (and his mother's erratic behavior following it) most certainly added to his depression. "Numbing-out" had seemed like the intelligent choice of someone who wanted to survive ... until wanting to survive wasn't the desired goal anymore.
Over the years, Jon often told people he believed he would die young, and given his behavior, most people probably believed it -- his childhood friends, his high school teachers, his long-time colleagues. That was the thing I spent most of our marriage battling: Jon's belief that no matter what he did, he would die young, so why fight it?
But I did fight it, with love and cholesterol-free breakfast muffins; regular check-ups, predictable arguments and prayer.
So that night, as we lifted our glasses of sparkling water, I made a toast so heartfelt I can still feel the lump in my throat when I remember it now:
"A lot of people in Jon's life would have bet against him ever reaching this birthday, much less this accomplishment," I say as I stand next to Jon on my tiptoes, so I can put my arm around his shoulders. "Jon himself would have laid his money on odds against it." I take a deep, shaky breath. "I'm glad I bet on Jon," I say simply, laughing through tears as our friends applaud and wrap us in hugs.
Today, I'm still glad I bet on Jon. Because of our friendship, my son has two loving parents and an incredible father - one who is so very present, in every sense of the word. He is thoughtful and caring with our son in a way that I've learned many people who have gone through The Program and truly taken the learning to heart can be. He was always a brilliant man - that was never the problem. But now he puts that brilliance to work in fathering, teaching, listening, guiding. For all my love and intention as a mother; for all the closeness my son and I had when he was little, it is his father who my son adores and has an incredible, real relationship with, and my son is so lucky to have him.
When we were married, I used to get angry at Jon for the choices he made. I used to say he was creating a life where his son was repeating his own childhood. That even though he was physically alive, he wasn't here, and his son was essentially growing up without a father.
That was the saddest, scariest thing of all to me, I guess.
But the beautifully ironic thing is, because we left each other, Jon is here.
I wouldn't trade a day of this life for anything.
Happy birthday to me.
Ginger is also a divorce blogger for the wellness site, ShareWIK (Share What I Know). When the site examined ways to create friendly divorces, Ginger and her ex told their story in an honest and often surprising way. If you ever wanted to have an amicable divorce (or understand how other people do it!), don't miss this: