The paperwork is its own kind of exhaustion.
Nobody warns you about the system
Very little is written honestly about the administrative part of leaving. It is not dramatic and it does not make a good story, so it mostly goes undescribed, which means people meet it unprepared.
It tends to arrive all at once. Benefits assessments that ask why you cannot work full time while raising children alone. Forms that still want a husband's signature four years after there was a husband. Legal costs that outrun what you earn. A court where the calmest person in the room is often the one who caused the problem.
The feeling people describe most is not anger at any individual. It is the sense that the process is built to outlast you. That if you simply give up asking, the system has worked as intended.
Knowing that in advance does not fix it, but it does stop you concluding that you are uniquely bad at this. You are not failing the process. The process is genuinely like this.
What people said
I did everything they asked and they moved the goalposts. Again.
fury
They say the system is there to help. The system is there to exhaust you into silence.
fury
I had to prove I deserved help. In a building designed to make you give up asking.
fury
The form asked for my husband's signature. I haven't had a husband in four years. The form hasn't been updated.
fury
The school called me 'just mum' in a meeting. I am never just anything.
fury
I home educate because the system failed my kids. Then the system asked me to prove I could do better. I did.
fury
I applied for universal credit. They asked why I couldn't work full time. I said I was raising two humans alone. They said that wasn't a reason.
fury
My solicitor costs more per hour than I earn in a day. Justice is a subscription service.
fury
He gets every other weekend and a reputation as a great dad. I get everything else and a reputation as difficult.
fury
The system isn't broken. It was built this way. To exhaust you into giving up.
fury
He told the court I was unstable. I'd been stable enough to keep his children alive for five years.
fury
If you are in the middle of it, keep copies of everything and get the free advice before the paid advice. Citizens Advice and Rights of Women both exist for exactly this.
You can put something down here without giving your name.
Write it down