New Chapters ◦ Chapter One: The Break ◦ Entry 5
For a long time after the divorce and sale of my house, I lived as if my story had already reached its ending.
Not in a dramatic way. Not with grief that announced itself loudly or closure that felt clean. Just a quiet internal assumption that the biggest part of my life was behind me now. The marriage was over. The house was gone. The future I had been building toward had dissolved into something unrecognizable. What remained felt like aftermath, not forward motion.
I moved through my days inside that in-between space — getting the kids where they needed to be, showing up to work, keeping the logistics of life running — but without any real sense of narrative beyond survival. I wasn’t building anything new yet. I wasn’t reaching toward anything either. I was simply existing inside the pause between what had closed and whatever might eventually come next.
At some point, though, that assumption began to loosen.
Not because anything external had dramatically changed. My circumstances were largely the same. The shape of my days still looked small and contained. But internally, something shifted from resignation to curiosity, from bracing against the future to quietly wondering if there might still be one worth shaping.
That question startled me more than the grief ever had.
If the story wasn’t actually over… then what came next?
I didn’t have an answer yet. I just knew that something in me was still paying attention. Still listening. Still capable of imagining a next page, even if I couldn’t see it clearly.
That quiet awareness began to change how I’d been thinking about what I called an ending. What had once felt final began to feel less like a full stop and more like a pause — not closed, just unfinished.
I began to recognize that sometimes endings are beginnings in disguise.
Not loud or obvious beginnings. Not clean restarts or dramatic reinventions. Just the subtle shift from bracing against what’s already happened to wondering what might still be possible.
There are chapters I haven’t reached yet. Directions I can’t see from here. A version of my life still forming beyond the edges of what I can name.
The story is still unfolding — changing shape, finding its rhythm, beginning again.
And so am I.
This post is part of my New Chapters series — personal essays about rebuilding, resilience, and writing what comes next. Visit the New Chapters landing page to explore the full series and read it in order.
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