End of Chapter

Today would've been my 10 year anniversary. Would have been...if I didn't get divorced two days ago. Talk about falling down at the one yard line. Then again, to be honest, this story began back in January. The divorce just made it official. Still, the timing of it all: ten year anniversary, a month after my grandmother died. It's a lot to take in. But that's what we do here at OrdaleCo. When life starts to rain we find a way to walk between the drops.

I won't lie; I'm emotional. Better yet, I'm confused. Part of me is still waiting for someone to jump out and tell me I'm being punked. I honestly don't believe the stuff that I've seen with my own eyes this year. I don't feel like writing the specifics. I will eventually, but that's a story that needs to be told over some chapters and not in a singular post. The best way I can analogize it is to say that it's like being married to someone who didn't know they had amnesia, and then one day they just snap out of it.

It doesn't matter that you have nine years together. It doesn't matter that you have a kid. They wake up and are instantly a totally different person. You can't negotiate that. You can't work that out. If the old person was happily married and a week later the new person says, "I'm not marriage material," what recourse do you have? I learned this year that trust is not a requirement for love. That explains the friends of mine who willingly went back into the whack-a-mole game that their relationships became. As far as I'm concerned, trust may not be a requirement for love, but it sure as hell is one for happiness.

It's depressing as hell to make the decision to sacrifice one for the other. It's hard to trudge through a divorce without the limitless energy that hate can provide. Even if you do make it through, you come out of it compromised. To be told that you didn't do anything wrong, that you were actually more than they felt they deserved, and then for that conversation to end with an axiom: I'm sorry, but I guess what they say is true, nice guys really do finish last... How can you not be compromised?

The truth is...you can't. You can't avoid it, but maybe that's a good thing. Something like this happens and it makes you question yourself and your values. If you can process all of the emotions and all of the hurt feelings and still arrive at the conclusion that this is who you are and how you want to live your life, then you know that it's real. You know who you are. I don't have to worry about having amnesia myself one day. I don't have to worry about my own happiness ever coming at the expense of someone else. So my story doesn't end just because one character drops out. We flip the page and start a new chapter.

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