What We Make of Lemons
Alex hadn’t seen it coming, not the way it actually unfolded.
Alex hadn’t seen it coming, not the way it actually unfolded. Sure, the marriage had a terrible start, but there was always a part of her that thought they’d somehow make it through side-by-side forever. Instead, the final unraveling came with a flood of lies and untruths, what a nightmare. At first it felt like an erosion and then more like an explosion. It was unfair, she had been conned.
She filed the divorce papers in person, writing on the seat of a chair, while she squatted, crouched low, with her ass just a graze away from the floor. She felt disgusting, like she belonged there, she was knocked on her ass in every sense of the word. Her heart was broken and she was afraid for her life, she had married a stranger and she was in more danger than she could have realised. She didn’t cry when she signed the paperwork. She didn’t feel lonely, she felt betrayed. For a while, she blamed herself. She’d chosen the right-wrong person, ignoring the gut feelings she couldn’t explain, and believed the lies she hadn’t known were lies. Because she wanted it to be real, she was convinced it was. Deep down inside her, she knew it was all too good to be true. In the end, she betrayed herself after giving a second chance to a con-artist. Trusting instincts are important, she didn’t know that yet either. It would take years to understand what happened and by then, it didn’t matter.
Alex was the sort of person who was surrounded by friends, had crowded weekends, brunch invites and club group chats. She wasn’t a loner and was an active adventurer. So when she made the decision to file the papers, she was stunned.
What stunned her more than the silence she felt was how loud some people became, people she never expected. A former coworker named Elise who showed up with a strong listening ear and no judgement. Her neighbour checked in on her every week, just to say: “Still here if you need anything.” Even friends she’d known from high school connected in person or over several calls while she processed her grief over everything. There were a handful of people rooting for her that she didn’t expect would be. It was wild.
The people she had celebrated, hosted, loaned money to, helped move, brought toilet paper to when they threw out their back, they vanished. Some offered weak excuses, some caused problems and some didn’t care or bother. A few even spread gossip about why it ended, painting her as everything she was not. It was clear to Alex that people didn’t really know her because she was private. In fact, she wasn’t really private because she was hiding anything, she was private because she had learned at a young age that if you don’t have anything nice to say about a person, you should say nothing. So she was quiet and private about her life because betrayal didn’t deserve a stage, or anymore of her already spent energy.
What hurt the most wasn’t the divorce itself. It was learning she’d been investing deeply in shallow wells.
One night, a friend asked her how she was doing, really. She told him the truth: she wasn’t okay, but she was grateful. Because for the first time in a long time, she saw clearly. Adversity, it turned out, was a floodlight, not just on her own inner strength, but on the true nature of the people around her. She faced obstacles that tested her strength, her character, her resilience; she had met such loss, illness, betrayal, emotional pain and she still got up, every time, with each blow, and she got knocked down hard, physically and metaphorically speaking.
She realized something else too. We don’t always want love from the ones who give it, we chase it from the ones who withhold it. But when the dust settles, it’s not popularity that holds your hand. It’s not reputation that brings groceries. It’s not charisma that shows up when you’re hard to love.
Alex learned that we all get a turn. Divorce is just one kind of rupture. For someone else, it might be the death of a parent, the loss of a job, or simply waking up and not recognizing your own reflection. Hardship finds us all eventually. The question is: who stays?
A fun fact she learned while signing her papers: in Ontario, you don’t even have to be legally separated for long, just one year of living apart is enough to file for a no-fault divorce. That fact didn’t feel like failure. It felt like freedom.
Alex didn’t get the chance to live with the con-artist, it all happened that quickly. This meant the divorce wasn’t one more wasted day added to the time she already unknowingly invested. Years later, this fact warmed her heart. She recognized she hadn’t betrayed herself after all. She made the best decisions she could with the information she had.
How could she have done better, when the truth had been buried under lies she couldn’t see?
Her gut saved her from what could have been so much worse.
Her story is much bigger than this. But if she were to tell it, it might be a lie, because so much of what she’d repeat could be things the liar told her. How do you tell a story honestly when the experience itself was built on half-truths, omissions, and manipulation?
It’s not worth the effort.
So instead, Alex chose to share the lessons, the only thing in the aftermath that feels truly, absolutely hers.
Lesson 1,976: The end of a marriage, isn’t the end of you. It’s the beginning of a new truth. Divorce, she realized, is not failure. It’s just choosing yourself, possibly for the first time in a very long time. And there’s nothing more successful than finally seeing who you are, who stays, and who never really showed up to begin with.
Written by Angela Fedele
Author’s Note:
This fictional story is based on a collection of experiences. Divorce isn’t always a clean break; sometimes it’s slow, messy and layered. If you have faced betrayal, loss, unexpected solitude, or gone through something that shook your world and revealed who truly stands beside you, you’re not alone.
Divorce is strange. The person you once chose, who is supposed to choose you back, is often the very one who doesn’t stand beside you through the unraveling. I wrote this as a reminder: surviving isn’t just about getting through something, it’s about seeing clearly, choosing yourself, and allowing that to be enough.
Also another lesson: don’t make the person you love your everything. We need others to help us grow. Sometimes it’s the outsiders, the quiet friends, the unlikely supporters, who test the strength of the bonds we thought were unbreakable.
Divorce is not failure. It is a form of courage. A step towards truth. A quiet kind of freedom.
Don’t be afraid to choose yourself, in marriage, in common-law partnerships, in situationships, and even at work. You don’t belong to anyone, and no one owns you. Both people always have the right to walk away. And sometimes, walking away is the most honest, loving thing you can do, for yourself.
