Today we started proceedings. It was a simple enough action required on my part. To find our marriage certificate, scan and send it to my ex. A standard piece of admin. The kind of task you complete every day, in your day to day life.

How can something so small feel so big?

I think it was the tangibility. Our names and wedding date in bold ink, staring up at me. Soon to be erased.

Over two and half years on we’ve definitely dragged the process out. Neither of us wanting to cross that final bridge to the point where we officially leave each other’s lives. It seems that every step of this final stage brings with it fresh heartbreak. The day we separated really was just the beginning.

And with every fresh flow of tears, I am once again thrown into a sea of self-doubt.

Have we done the right thing? Neither of us has met anyone else. We still very much get on.

Could we have fixed things? I’ve learnt so much in the last two years and would do things so differently now.

How can something right hurt this much? I miss him, yet I don’t think of him most days.

There are no answers. Apart from that it is just really, really hard.

Divorce sucks. You don’t expect to end up here. You expect the opposite.

We’re sold forever. We sign up to it. We enter into a lifelong commitment in good faith. Certainly, I did. As did he. He told me the other day as we sat on the floor in his hallway discussing divorce and fussing over the cat we once shared.

It seems strange that there can still be so much love when we are in the process of officially telling the world we are no longer in love, having once publicly proclaimed we were.

It all feels so foolish. How terrible you feel about the wedding and the fairy tale ending that never was. Thoughts range from the practical of needing to return every wedding gift you undeservedly received, to the deep sense of failure and disappointment you feel for all your family and friends who were rooting for you.

Then there is the sense of waste. If it was always going to lead to this moment, what was the point of any of it? Why didn’t we call time sooner? We could have moved on, younger with less years invested and more time to find someone else and a second shot at success.

All of this is compounded by sadness and loss. The future you will never have. The marriage you will never see play out. The person who will not be by your side as you age. The day we separated he told me he never once believed we wouldn’t grow old together. How did we mess it up so badly?

None of this though is anything compared to the guilt. This is the absolute worst of divorce. Because divorce is a choice. Sometimes it’s a choice you don’t want to have to make. But ultimately you choose whether you stay in or leave a marriage. And I chose to leave. A choice I have to live with every day. As does he. I chose that future for us. One he didn’t want. And that is the hardest thing to live with. Yes, of course taking a life, that is on another level of things to live with. But in many ways, I feel like I did take a life. I took his life, as he knew it, away from him.

You’d think that in over two years these feelings would have lessened.

Indeed, they aren’t experienced as often, but they are still as intense. I’ve avoided them as much as possible. Medication. Distraction. Denial. All highly effective ways of avoiding your feelings. But they are always there. And these small moments, such as today’s email task, serve as small triggers that bring them instantly to the surface. Taking you right back to the day you separated and leaving you wondering when you will no longer feel like this.

Maybe one of us simply needs to meet someone else. I dread that day, for then it really is over. Because as I’m learning about divorce, there is a reason it’s called a divorce process. Divorce is a series of milestones you pass on your way to getting over it. And it isn’t until you have both moved onto new lives and futures that it is really over. I have to accept there is more heartbreak to come. Divorce is not one heartbreak, it is a succession of them, stretching out into the distance for some time to come. This isn’t the beginning or the end, I’m just in the process and I had better dig deep, because it’s not going to get any easier for a while yet.