The Best Thing About Being Separated

I thought I would caption this with lyrics from
"All the Single Ladies," a song I know exists because someone told me,
but it turns out that the title is pretty much all of the lyrics.
So, okay, then.

When I was in high school, I was in some sort of weird "Suicide Watch List." I wonder now, if anyone who ever committed suicide in my high school was on their stupid watch list. In any case, I was never once, not once, in danger of offing myself.

I was put on the list because I wrote really dark, morbid and depressing poetry. I also maybe talked about death a lot and read biographies of serial killers for fun. Whatever, I was a joy to be around, people, I swear.

The thing is that as a person that you might have known and had conversations with and such, you would have known that I was not suicidal. But I wrote about it. Because for me, and many others, writing is a little bit of catharsis. You take all your dark feelings, you dump them on paper and then you can move on happily without them. That's always been my feeling at least.

And, so, despite my over-arching message, of "I'm Fine, Already," I feel like I've been sort of a Debbie Downer about the whole divorce process. And yes, at times it sucks. I have my bad nights, my whiny moments, I hear our song on the radio or try to explain my Buffy obsession and I feel incredibly lonely. I also struggle with money, because single incoming it sucks and I worry that things will never even out and feel normal. These things are all normal.

But I write about them, because dumping them on the Internet gets them out of my system. If you know me and talk to me, you probably know that I am Fine is not a mantra, but a true statement about myself.

So, I thought I would tell you all the best part of about my current situation. And I bounced around quite a few lovely ideas.

• Sleeping single in a double bed - hells yes.
• Only being able to blame myself for the fruit flies - whatevs, fruit flies are totally the new black.
• Never pulling dirty socks out from between the sofa cushions - and I mean ever.
• Always having control over the remote - hehe.
• Being able to stay up as late as I want, go to bed as early as I want or turn on the TV in the middle of the night when I can't sleep - Alumaloy, here I come.
• Getting - and remaining - semi-caught up with laundry

And, I'm not kidding here, those things all rock. But the best thing - the truly amazingly wonderful thing - is the peace.

Louis CK says that "happy marriages don't end in divorce," and when you think about it, that makes so much sense that it hurts. I can't speak for everyone involved, so understand that I am only speaking for myself here, but I was NOT happy. 

Marriage is a constant give and take, push and pull, an eternal compromise, and if it is healthy then everyone gives and takes basically the same amount. I can honestly say that in the beginning, we did that. In the end... we didn't. 

We fought and we made each other miserable. There was never peace, there was only the eggshelly space in between the arguments. There were hurts suffered in silence and there were hurts suffered out loud. That was the up and down of our relationship at the end. At least, that's how my view of it looked.

And I can truly tell you that I am a happier person now, and I hope that he is too. I hope that he has a list like mine up there and can point to some of the things that drove him crazy about me and say, "Thank goodness, never again." 

And that's fine. If I had to read his list, it might hurt my feelings a little (mostly because I still believe myself to be a joy) but not for very long. The fact is that we didn't work. And now we don't have to. And while some days that makes me sad, some days the Dolphins make me sad. I am okay. I am totally and completely fine. And not in a because I have to be way, because the new landscape of my life is totally better than the old one.