One year ago today I went to a court house to dissolve my marriage. I was married for a little over five years to a man I have known since I was a kid. I don’t remember how we met because it was so long ago. We gave things a try and they didn’t work out.

This last year is the first year of my life where I have really been on my own.

I didn’t really have a lot of relationships. When I got engaged to my ex I hadn’t had a boyfriend in over ten years. I didn’t date at all when I was in college. When I married my ex I didn’t really have any career prospects and I was afraid that I had missed my opportunity to meet anyone and to get married.

I lived with my parents until I was 27 years old. I had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder when I was 16. I don’t think I ever had bipolar disorder. I was being sexually harassed by a number of people at the school I was attending (including the priest who taught our religion classes) and basically instead of doing anything about it, everyone just decided what I was saying couldn’t possibly be true and I must be crazy. I spoke to some of the people I went to school with over the last few years and they agree with me that something was terribly off about our school and that it wasn’t just me.

I spent ten years being medicated for an illness I don’t have. Those medications clouded my mind and destroyed my ability to function. I spent ten years being told that anything that I felt or observed that was inconsistent with what other people wanted to believe was wrong and I could be discounted because I was crazy. I was sometimes actively targeted by people who knew they could bully me and people would let them because I was the weird crazy girl. I was told to hide who I am and pretend like I was normal to avoid all the trouble people cause me. I was told not to set my sights too high because I was never going to accomplish anything and that just getting through college or holding down a job were high enough aspirations.

I am not recounting this to get sympathy or whatever. I am simply trying to explain why I didn’t have a job or live on my own until recently. There was a period of time where I didn’t think I would graduate from college. I never thought I could hold down a full time job. My self was slowly being hacked away over the years and I lost track of who I really am.

I married my ex-husband so that I could have a future. He seemed like a stable person and I had no stability in my life. He had direction and I wanted to have a better life. So I married him and we moved into our house six and a half years ago.

Things did get better. I got my first full time job. It was working at Target, but I did that job for a year. Then I got a better job and held that for a year and a half. Then I got a miserable job that eventually lead me to programming. I went back to school, I networked, and I now have a really great career.

Sometimes I forget where I came from. I forget how miserable and hopeless everything seemed in my twenties. I forget there was a period of time where I missed half of my classes because of various mental health issues. I forget that a teacher told me not to set my sights too high and I should just focus on finding a nice little town with a nice psychiatrist to settle in. I forget consistently being told I will never amount to anything and won’t do anything special or important with my life. I have a life I never thought was possible. My highest aspirations when I was 25 was to have a quarter of what I have now. It’s a miracle to me that my life exists.

Even though it’s a miracle, I still have felt a great deal of depression over this last year. I feel like I have no right to feel this way. I should be grateful for what I have, and I am. I shouldn’t want more, but I do.

This past year has been incredibly upsetting. I have never had a time where I had to figure out who I am. I have never had to pay my own bills. I didn’t know if I would run out of money because I did something stupid like buy too many books and so I wouldn’t have heat. I was afraid I would forget about paying my property taxes and lose my house. Those were the first insurmountable things.

After that, I found other things insurmountable. I am just now starting to figure out what I want to do with my house. I never decorated it or organized it because it was simply too overwhelming. I also wasn’t committed to staying here since there was nothing keeping me here anymore. I was deeply ambivalent about it. I also had a worry that if I started treating the house like it was mine that i was precluding the possibility of letting another person into my life. I know from my experiences with my ex that he treated the house like it was his house. He begrudged me any space in the house because he thought of it as his. I know that if I paint the house and bring in all of my bookshelves and I fill all the space in the house, I am basically enforcing that I have no room in my home for anyone else except me. I am afraid that the longer I am by myself, the less likely it is that I will ever feel comfortable letting another person in.

I don’t want to be alone forever. Being alone right now is fantastic. I can do whatever I want. I haven’t put my laundry away in over a year. I don’t have to coordinate what I cook with anyone else. I don’t have to spend my weekends being dragged around by my significant other when I would rather be at home working on my electronics projects. Being alone right now is great, but I don’t want to be alone for the rest of my life.

One thing I didn’t count on with the divorce was the deep depression I felt. I had fantasies about spending long glorious weekends programming and working on electronics projects. I thought that if I could control all of my time that I would have this golden productive period where I would get so much done. A lot of days it was a struggle just to get out of bed.

I miss being touched. I don’t think my husband and I were particularly physically affectionate, but apparently it was enough that I didn’t feel the overwhelming ache that I feel every day now from not being touched. I sometimes will lay on my stomach on the floor because the weight being applied helps with the pain. The pugs help with the pain too. One reason I adamantly wanted to work from home the last year or so is that if I can’t touch the pugs I fall into a massive depression because of lack of physical contact with another living thing.

I read a while ago about some company talking about doing cuddling as a service. I would be all over that. I keep having people telling me I can get guys to take me on dates so I can be touched, but that tends to lead to things I am not ready to do yet and I think it’s fraud to pretend to be into someone just because you miss being hugged. I would like it if I could just pay someone to cuddle with me for an hour and leave and know it’s not going anywhere.

People have suggested online dating, but I really don’t want to go there. I have spent a lot of time and energy avoiding the vast awfulness that is The Internet that I don’t want to open myself up to unsolicited dick pictures and verbal harassment from guys who are mad at me for not responding to their dick pictures. I would like to find someone through networking like I did with my job, but in spite of the reputation that programmers have for being antisocial neckbeards most of the men I encounter in our community are married and in long term relationships. That being said, DON’T ASK A WOMAN OUT AT A PROGRAMMING CONFERENCE!! EVER!! Those are professional events and I go to them for professional reasons, not to meet men.

So why am I writing this blog post? I am writing it partially because I have had a number of people over the last year come to me to talk about their pending divorces. I wanted to share my experiences with depression after my divorce because those feelings are normal. Even if you were the one who wanted the divorce, you’re going to feel sad. It’s okay to feel sad. Don’t beat yourself up because you have days you can’t get out of bed and the world seems hopeless. Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t do all the stuff you thought you were going to get done once you were alone. You’ve gone through a trauma and traumas take time to heal.

Also, don’t necessarily rush into a relationship immediately after getting divorced. Even though it’s painful and difficult, it’s important to be alone with yourself for a while. It’s important to know who you are and what you want from life. If you immediately jump into another relationship with someone, you don’t have time to process why your last relationship failed. I think we’re all so eager to avoid being unattached because it’s somehow socially deviant that we’re setting ourselves up for failure because we are treating being in a relationship like being in a job. You can’t be unemployed. If you are, then there’s something wrong with you. There’s nothing wrong with being alone and deciding that you’re not going to give up your freedom for someone unless they’re special. Also, get a pug. Pugs are great at snuggles.

Last thing I want to do is thank this community of people. I would not be here right now if it wasn’t for the people in this community. I thanked everyone for being awesome this weekend and someone thought I was leaving programming. That’s not the case at all. Programming has given my life meaning and direction over the last few years.

I want to thank Eric Knapp for teaching me how to program and letting me ask him the same stupid question over and over again because there was some nuance I didn’t understand that was bothering me. I want to thank Emily Van Haren for holding me in the hallway at school when I broke down sobbing because I didn’t think I could continue on anymore because life was too difficult. I want to thank Josh Smith for getting me to talk to Dave Klein about speaking at CocoaConf and changing how I thought about myself. I want to thank Chris Adamson for being one of my first mentors and for helping me fulfill my lifelong dream of writing a book. I want to thank Brad Larson for helping me to solidify my programming skills and for giving me the job I needed to be able to leave my ex-husband. I want to thank all of the conference organizers who let me speak at their conferences when I was nobody and unemployed so that I could network with people and have a future. Lastly, I want to thank everyone I have met, everyone who follows me on Twitter, and everyone who reads this blog. I spent my whole life being told to hide who I am because no one would ever accept me. The amount of support and acceptance I have received from this community is something I never thought was possible. I would not be here without that. So thank you.