Counting "divorced" as one of my personal adjectives is a bizarre thing. Like it or not, this is now a huge part of who I am. I don't like this as an identifier, but there's no getting around how much this has shaped me. You don't spend 15 years with someone and lose them without it becoming a part of you. But still — I'm tall. I'm a teacher. I'm divorced. This is a descriptor. This is uncomfortable.

I was about to meet Mike's parents, and realized this was how they know me — I'm someone from college. I'm someone from California. I'm someone who's divorced. Worse, actually, I'm someone who is getting divorced.

I had no idea how to bring this up when I started dating. When do you tell someone? You bring it up too early, it's, "Whoah, hey, that's a lot of information for someone I just met." Too late, "How could you not tell me this earlier?" The problem is, of course, compounded by the fact that the thing isn't final. I tried casually slipping it into conversation: "We used to do so and so — oh that was back when I was married," but was never able to pull it off successfully.

What was nice about Mike was that he has known me since college, so there was no news to break. There was, though, that horrible moment way at the beginning, when he said, "So, when did your divorce become final?" And having to answer, "Well, it's not."

Eventually, this will be so far in the past that it will cease to be a top-three descriptor. Eventually, everything will have been finalized for so long that I won't have thought about it in ages. Eventually, I'll stop worrying about what parents and new friends and colleagues think. This day, honestly, can't come soon enough.