I sit at my computer. I sip my coffee and think about today’s column.

I know what I want to write about. I am angry.

The summer has me a few days behind so I sift through my inbox first and open one of my Beliefnet e-mails. I look forward to seeing the highlighted features and the writer in me always loves to scroll down to the quote. I find the following:

“I have learned that it is no one else’s job to take care of me but me.” – Beyonce

I talk a lot about the tears and sadness of divorce and less about the frustration and anger. The past few days I have been mad. I am tired of the stress, anxiety, fear, sadness, lack of sleep and other worries that have accompanied this divorce. I am most intolerant of the burden it has placed on my children.

I am angry because it was all so unnecessary. It was one person acting out their own anger rather than dealing with their issues and emotions. Even worse this can become an elongated process drawn out by controlling battles and long legal battles.

I am not mad. I am piping mad.

My children did not deserve to be at the mercy of an adult behaving badly. Their lives did not deserve to be so greatly impacted for such a long time with such intense behaviors. They deserved better. They deserve to be children with adults in their lives who are lessening their burden not adding to it.

I have always had a major pet peeve. What I call ‘self-induced stress.’ The person who adds unnecessary stress to others lives because they just failed to plan. The person who makes you late to an important meeting because they didn’t put gas in their car the night before or who wakes up late and runs around the house stressing everyone else out because they can’t find what they should have looked for earlier. Don’t get me wrong. I am not overly organized nor am I particular or uptight. I just don’t like stress. Quite frankly stress stresses me out. So if it can be avoided I have never understood why an individual wouldn’t do everything in their power to avoid it – especially since a lack of self-responsibility on the part of one stresses out someone else who shouldn’t be at the receiving end of it. I find it all self-indulgent and selfish.

That’s how I am beginning to feel out divorce. It is a lack of self-responsibility to not take ownership for a failed relationship. It is self-indulgent and selfish to cause all of this stress to a spouse and children when the choices one made led them to this result.

I deserved better. I always knew that. I have a healthy self-esteem. I am a leader not a follower. I am strong and not weak. However, I will not abandon those I love easily though ironically I was abandoned with much ease. I also underestimated how difficult it is to get away from another human being when they aren’t truly interested in divorce, but rather retribution. In other words, they aren’t interested in self-responsibility.

So Beyonce’s words ring true for two separate reasons.

One – because I looked for someone to worry about what they were doing to me. I should have just taken control of my own life and remembered that it is no one else’s job to take care of me but me and gotten out sooner.

Two – because the other individual in my life should have accepted responsibility for their behavior rather than making me the recipient of it.

All of this time has been lost to unnecessary stress. I am so angry that my children had to experience this.

I will teach them that…

“I have learned that it is no one else’s job to take care of me but me.” – Beyonce

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