"It's crippling." No matter how amicable, divorce brings out the ugly in everyone.

Nobody knows heart pain quite like the mum who lays awake at 1am, wiping away tears she didn't know she still had left to cry.

Divorce is crippling at times.

Her journey has been one she wouldn't wish on anyone but yet also wouldn't change a thing.

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Divorce as amicable as it may be, brings out ugly in so many people and not just the ones married.

She's watched the fakest of friendships form at the sheer sadness of people enjoying gossip, enjoying someone else's pain and enjoying seeing someone when they are vulnerable.

She lost "friends" who "chose sides".

She's been judged, really, because she was the bigger person. Because she didn't let all the ugly out. She didn't share the real reasons because those were her cards to live with.

Sometimes she wonders had she been less "amicable" less eager to forgive and forget whether she wouldn't lay there feeling angry towards the fakeness, maybe she would have found peace in calling out the total bullshit that has been pitied on.

But that is ugly.

And as a mother, as someone who didn't fake a relationship or a friendship, she had respect enough for herself to walk past those judgmental looks, the whispers, she chooses to ignore the screenshots and the evidence of ugliness in others.

She wouldn't wish this on anyone.

She wouldn't find joy in someone else's misery.

She hopes you never have to live it.

She has hope your daughters never have to live a similar story to hers, because woman to woman – you have been cruel, and if there is one thing a woman who has been victim to any form of abuse or neglect needs no more of -– it's cruel.

She lays down at night and hopes to God or the universe, that her kids are happy.

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That they have peace.

She has hope divorce doesn't bring ugly out in them one day.

She wishes for their healing more than her own.

And to the woman who came along after her, she has hope you are the final fixer.

Maybe you have more magic than she did or the one before her.

Maybe you won't see the same pattern.

Maybe the show will go on longer than the last did.

Does she sound bitter?

Yes.

Bitter comes from pain which the heart still feels when a child asks why and she chooses to lie to protect them when it wasn't her fault.

Before she had kids, it was easy to forget pain, she could move on and be happy again.

Now even though she has moved on, and she is, as deserved, happy, her heart will always have pain, for her children.

Feature Image: Getty.

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