After Kody and I decided to divorce, I said the words that I would forever regret. I said that I wished he’d killed himself instead because it would have been easier. I at least didn’t say it to him, but I know I thought it really loud in his direction more than once. They were words thought in anger. At the time, I was angry. Angry that I’d spent months providing for him only for him to abandon me. Angry that he thought the solution to depression was getting away from me. Anger lead me to think that thought and it has hung over me since.

The truth was that uprooting my whole life felt like complete torture. Moving back in with my mother, having to try to get my cats readjusted to a new space, and facing the possibility of just really finding my entire life unaffordable was completely awful. But I know now that it wouldn’t have been as awful as his death would have been.

When I came home to find Kody gone and a note on the counter, I originally thought this was the end and that he’d finally done something I couldn’t prevent. Only after I read the note, did I realize that he was leaving me. He was only ending our relationship, not his life. I can’t even explain the level of anger and hurt that it left me with. I can only imagine how it’d have felt if it had been his suicide note instead.

Kody died two and a half years after he left and even that sent shockwaves through my life that still haven’t settled. I cannot imagine how it would have been if at that point in time he had killed himself. It was better to be able to be angry with him while painting rooms of the house for resale. It was better being stung by wasps in my yard after trying to be nice and mow before the new people came and to be able to be so angry that he didn’t help me. If he’d been dead, I wouldn’t have been able to be so angry.

I really do feel that anger was a huge part of what sustained me through the biggest change of my life. If instead of anger I’d have had to feel what I have felt over the least several years, I don’t know how I would have survived it. Partially since I did survive it, I knew I would once he actually died. I wish those angry words hadn’t come to my head, but I can’t take them back. Words thought in anger, even said in anger, can’t be taken back. I hope it is enough that I was wrong. It wouldn’t have been easier if he had died. It certainly hasn’t been.