Time flies...

I recently realized that it's now been ten years since the ex-hub and I separated the first time. It was late May of 1996 -- I don't remember the exact date anymore. Funny -- I remember counting each day we were apart, then!

Now, I initially hesitated to write about this, because sometimes I think I sound like I'm not over all of that mess (click here if you don't know what I'm talking about), but fuck it. I know I have scars from that relationship that I will carry around for the rest of my life.

And I'm big on milestones. Especially huge, life-altering ones.

I wasn't going to look at my journal from that time, because I'm in a good mood today, and I still remember how utterly and completely devastated I was when we decided to separate....and who needs to go back down that road again?

But I can't help but smile, looking back at some of what I wrote, and at some of the letters we exchanged.

• 
  

Early on, I couldn't sleep, I could barely eat, I felt like I was going to throw up all the time, I got a cold, and I was incredibly unfocused at work. Fortunately, my colleagues were very patient with me and my constant fuck-ups.

"I feel like a giant, open wound. What does it say about me that despite all the shit he's put me through, I still want to spend my life with him? I hate him for this, and yet I love him with all my heart."

"I'm just so drained. Kind of numb, too. Can you be numb and in pain at the same time?"

He wanted us to do something together on my birthday, which was a few weeks after we separated. Um, hello? I don't think so. He honestly couldn't understand why I didn't want to spend the day with him. Um, HELLO?? Pain, much?

(Tangent: for several years after we split, he'd send me flowers on my birthday, which annoyed me to no end. I'd send them home with a co-worker -- and in fact, would often never even see them, because I usually take my birthday off -- and leave him a voice mail telling him to knock it off -- that I didn't want them, I didn't enjoy them, and I wasn't keeping them. He finally stopped after the year I screamed into his voice mail, "IF YOU'RE TRYING TO MAKE ME FEEL SHITTY ON MY BIRTHDAY, YOU'VE DONE A GOOD JOB, ASSHOLE!" Heh.)

A little more than a month after we split, I was in much better emotional shape than he was. Now, I suppose that's to be expected, since he was also grappling with the truth about who he really was... but at the same time, what he put me through made me question everything I thought was true. This is not an exaggeration; I mean EVERYTHING.

And I'd almost forgotten about what I'd done about my wedding ring.

I hated looking at it after we separated; it felt like a big, fat lie on my hand. And I couldn't get the fucking thing off, because I'd gained weight after we got married. Nothing worked -- soap, vaseline, nothing.

So I went to the hardware store to find something that would cut through gold, and got a weird look from the guy I asked for help.

I found something, came home, and cut the damned thing off, sobbing the whole time. It didn't occur to me that maybe I was endangering my finger, considering my emotional state and how sharp that tool was.

But now I'm sitting here laughing out loud at the memory. And the joke was on me, because the indentations left behind by that ring (and the tan lines left by the other rings he'd given me) took awhile to fade.

Yeah, I got it re-soldered and re-sized during the summer, just in case... and resumed wearing it once we'd reconciled six months later. It came off again -- the normal way -- three ugly and painful months after that. (I'll write about that to mark that anniversary.)

Eventually, I took the stupid thing to a pawn shop, after no "reputable" jeweler was interested in it, and got a whopping $75 for it.

• 
  Somehow, that seems like an appropriate comment on the marriage itself. And yeah, I'm smiling as I click on "publish post."