“I want a divorce.”  Four simple words.  Not four words I had expected to hear.  Certainly not four words I expected to hear over the phone instead of in person.  But I heard them, and I am once again in familiar territory.

Was our marriage perfect?  No.  Were there problems that I created and/or contributed to?  Yes.  The thing is, though, that last Tuesday morning, after I heard those words, I would have told you there was a chance (a small chance) we could still work things out.  Within little more than a day, I knew there wasn’t, and I also knew that I probably wanted the divorce more than she did.

I was sad for that day between.  Knowing somebody no longer loves you is not an easy thing (having it constantly happening, in different meanings of the word love, really blows).  Finding out the person you were married to had a cruel and vicious streak is unbelievably disconcerting.  On Wednesday, once I realized that, yes, it was over and even if there was a chance, I no longer wanted it, I took my ring off.  That has been difficult, because the ring has been there for seven years.  I have a habit of taking it off, turning it over, and putting it back on my finger.  I have tried to do that a few times only to remember there is no longer a ring there.

There was sadness, but it’s gone.  Well, not gone, exactly.  I packaged it up and put it in a box in the corner of my mind’s attic.  If there is an outer sadness, it’s that my (soon-to-be) ex has further destroyed my faith and that I am once again alone.  No, what I have more than anything is anger.

I’m angry about the way she left.  She treated me worse than she did her first husband, who, by all accounts, was an out-and-out bastard dipped in evil sauce.  Before she left, she said she did love me, even if she did not “love you the way you deserve to be loved”, and then she proceeded to completely destroy that statement--either that or love and hate are really, really not that far apart.

And the thing is that I am angry.  And yet I have no way to express it.  I am here with the children, and I am not going to express my anger in front of them.  Although my ex might not believe it, of all the people who have known about this, I have been the one who has talked the kindest about her, who has requested others not talk bad about her in front of the kids.  So I’m suppressing that anger.  And when I talk to her, she acts like it was some event way in the past that I should have gotten over by now, as if I were still perturbed about how Irish immigrants were treated in America during the nineteenth century.  This just happened.  It hasn’t even been a week.  She was scared, she said, and in her fear, she found the absolutely worst way to damage as many people as she could. 

We almost did this before, with some of the same circumstances, in 2006.  There’s a part of me that wishes that when I brought the suitcases into the bedroom and told her to pack her stuff up, since she obviously didn’t want to be with me, that I had stuck to it.  I couldn’t, though--my love was strong, and she hadn’t quite found the way to destroy it.  But if she had, I wouldn’t have had to suffer through losing Dane.  And I wouldn’t have to watch Tatiana go through the same kind of pain Robyn had to, because there would have been no Tatiana (make no mistake, I love Tatiana to the moon and back, but then I wouldn’t have known about her and this suffering would not have existed).  I also wouldn’t have moved to Arkansas; that was never my plan, but I promised her we would do so after I retired.  And now here I am in a house that I don’t plan to leave, because I’m not moving again unless absolutely necessary, and she has left the state, when all that she said she had to be here for is still here. 

So here I am, about to be a single father again.  A twice-divorced single father--I’ll have to build a fence to keep all the women away.  And, you know, I’m having major trust issues right now, so that is really receptive to relationships.  If it wasn’t for the fact that I find the penis ridiculous I might almost explore the homosexual lifestyle, but that is pretty much a non-starter. 

Right now I’m been making cryptic remarks on FaceBook (or maybe not that cryptic), because I have to find little ways to release the anger and not just start shouting at the top of my lungs.  My ex and I talked last night, in hopes that we could come upon an agreement for our divorce settlement, and she talked about how she didn’t want to fight and mentioned that one thing I said was me being an ass.  Perhaps so.  But the thing is--I deserve to be an ass, a little bit.  I am here.  I am taking care of the kids.  I am taking care of the kids and having to manage going to school while I did so, because she left without a concern about how I was going to handle it.  She says one thing, and then her actions tell me that while she says she still cares about me, she really hates me.  Because that isn’t the way you would treat somebody you care about, right? 

Is this the best approach?  I don’t know.  But since she won’t allow me to vent at her, it’s the best I can do (venting is pretty hard to do when somebody is several states away and can hang up on you; not to mention that you don’t really want to say too much that your kids can hear). 

I’m putting this out here for people to read, in part to just release some steam and also to let people who haven’t already figured it out know what’s going on.  I haven’t gotten into the whole details of what’s happened in the last week, and up to now, I’ve only shared them with two people fully (and two others somewhat).  I find it difficult to talk to people about what’s going on inside my heart and head; I always have.  Maybe there’s a reason for that--two of the people I have let inside wanted to divorce me.  If I haven’t talked to you about it (assuming you’re family or a close friend), it’s nothing against you and it’s also not something I feel I am obligated to do.  Listening to people tell me how horrible she was, or that “I told you so”, or how I could be leading my life better holds no interest to me.  I appreciate those who have helped, and those who have indicated they would be willing to listen--those people I cherish.

So I’ve released a little blood, and the anger has resided.  Hopefully, over time, I can put it in its cage forever, but it might take a while.