I Finally Paid Off My Divorce Lawyer—And It Feels Like Freedom

This year marks three years since my divorce was finalized. Whew! Today, I can finally say, I have officially paid off my divorce lawyer.

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When I submitted that last and final payment, I cried. The first day I walked into my lawyer’s office I knew that I wanted peace. Peace from the thoughts that battered my mind with fears. It was not fear because of the money. It was fear and relief of everything that payment represented. The sacrifices. The struggle. The emotional turmoil. The journey of reclaiming my life after leaving a marriage that no longer served me.

Filing for Divorce With Nothing but Determination

I filed for divorce with savings from my support team and along with little to no income. I had no job. I was just a Youtuber and blogger during a time I barely knew how I would keep going.

But what I did know was that I deserved better.

My ex-husband did not want a divorce. He also never imagined I would have the money to go through with it. Maybe he thought I would always be stuck, living in a state of legal separation and unable to truly move forward. He was sadly mistaken because enough had been done.

He had already started over, ‘Sha! I was not mad about it.

What he was doing in the dark had surfaced into the light for the world to see. He was happily building a new family while we were in the early stages of separation.

However, quite as it was kept he still told me he wanted his family back and how much our family meant to him. The kicker was that he never apologized for the pain he caused. He was not sorry.

He enjoyed temporarily kicking me down mentally and emotionally after all our years together. Never acknowledged the disrespect. The betrayal. He also never brought up the emotional damage he inflicted on me during postpartum.

I had a choice: stay in dysfunction for the sake of keeping a family together or break the cycle for the sake of peace. I chose my peace. My happiness is priceless.

Choosing Myself Was the Hardest and Best Decision

I never wanted to raise my children as a single mother. I was raised by a single mother myself, and I know how hard that path is. I also knew I couldn’t allow my children to grow up witnessing a broken marriage and even mistaking dysfunction for love.

I left.

And now, miles away from the life I once had. I am raising my kids on my own. I am giving this motherhood thing all I have and a little more. I am thugging this journey out not because I wanted to, but because I had to. Because I deserved better. Because they deserved better.

Even while going through my divorce, I had already moved on emotionally. So seeing that last payment invoice clear I smiled. I no longer have to be reminded every month of the price I had to pay for my happiness, peace, and independent after being codependent in the later years of my marriage.