Minutes after we'd been declared husband and ex-wife, Edgar was vigorously berating me, calling me a dumb, stupid woman. I looked up at him and wept.

"I'm giving you what you wanted," he said. "I kept my mouth shut."

I kept crying and trying not to think about the other people in the waiting area. They probably appreciated the entertainment.

It was my turn to keep quiet. I recognized Ed's fury as the typical reaction of alcoholics and addicts when something doesn't go their way: It has to be somebody else's fault. Ed was right, I'd gotten what I wanted. There was no need to remind him of how and why, with the destructive assistance of alcohol, we'd ended up in divorce court.

My ex actually, accidentally, did me some favors as our marriage came to an end. Over a year ago, he was the one who angrily asked if I wanted a divorce, never expecting me to say yes. Had he not asked, I'd probably still be working up the courage to say so.

On the day of the final hearing, he reminded me that he is prone to untruthfulness and to blaming others for his problems.

I felt really bad when I told the judge our marriage was irretrievably broken. Though I'd been over that question and over it and over it countless times, always finding the answer was yes, still I had a small doubt at the moment of truth.

It wasn't big enough to stop me, though.

I never thought I'd get divorced. I meant that business about taking Ed for the rest of my days. When I realized, though, that my days would be fewer if I stayed married to a man who couldn't quit drinking, I was able to break my promise.

I'm sad about it, but I'm not sorry about it.
 

"You know, you can still change your mind." Edgar and I were waiting outside a courtroom for the final hearing in our divorce.

"And waste all the perfectly good money I spent on this?" I asked.

"I've made more expensive mistakes," he replied, and our conversation returned to the relaxed kind of catching-up we'd been doing, talking about work, the election, our parents.

He said he'd told his mother the little dog he brought her from the shelter was one of mine that I couldn't take along on my move out of state, and told me I had to back the story if it ever came up.

"Why did you lie to your mother?" I asked. He shifted and sighed a little before saying that was the only way to get her to take the companion he wanted her to have.

Then my name was called and we took our place in the marriage disassembly line. "Sit at the table to the left," the bailiff instructed, and we watched as a red-haired woman gave monosyllabic answers to questions about a business and her ex-husband. Her proceeding didn't even last long enough for me to figure out what it was about before it was our turn.

We handed over our driver's licenses. Ed glared at me. My heart sank as I gave the monosyllabic answers that ended my marriage of eight years, especially when I said yes, it was irretrievably broken. Never a word to or from Ed, who threw his packet of papers down on the table and stalked out when it was over.

They said we'd be called in a few minutes to go downstairs and get certified copies of our unmarriage certificate. I returned to the nook where we had waited, sat down and cried. Ed joined me.

"Dumb, stupid woman," he said. "Lying to that man that this marriage was irretrievably broken. Dumb, stupid woman!"

(To be continued...) 

My life, I have learned, consists of things I can do something about and things I can't.

Sometimes it takes a while to determine which is which. It took some time for me to notice that I really was unhappily married and more time after that to start to do something about it. Many moons passed before Edgar seemed to accept the idea that I would not remain his wife.

I could have battled with him while he worked his way to this conclusion, spending thousands of dollars I didn't actually have on lawyers and forcing him to do the same. Luckily, my circumstances required me to do something different: to wait.

I've read about the sharp difference in perspective between halves of a divorcing couple. The "leaving" spouse, the one who initiates the action, usually has been contemplating the end of the marriage for some time. Often the "left" spouse is blindsided, for many reasons including denial.

Our separation, and the time it took to find the most economical way to divorce, provided a cooling-off period. During that time, I became certain that I wanted our marriage to end and Ed had a chance to get his head around the idea.

Of course, it might have turned out differently — um, happily ever after? — and that would've been okay too. But I'm glad that I had to take the time to find out when and if I should do something final about my marriage.

Marry in haste, repent at leisure? I suspect that's true of divorce as well.

A week or two after I filed the papers for my uncontested divorce, I received notification of the date of my final hearing. This week! Whoa.

The instructions I got at the courthouse said it'd be three to eight weeks before the letter arrived. I was up in North Carolina, trying to get settled in my new place. Suddenly I had to scurry back to Florida.

That meant a long car trip, which gave me plenty of time for rumination. So I went over my situation again.

When I was an active alcoholic, I fell in love with and married and active alcoholic. We both got worse over the following several years until two things happened: I became convinced I needed to quit drinking and I lost hope that my husband, Edgar, would stop.

One of the hardest things I ever did was pitch him out of the house we shared. After that, a year went by, during which I stayed sober and Ed continued his pattern of falling off the wagon and jumping on, falling off and jumping back on... 

I became confident that my decision to divorce was the right one. Watching Ed kill himself on the installment plan would probably kill me, as I might resume drinking in an attempt to cope with it.

It was the right decision, but not a comfortable one. I'm not divorcing Ed because I don't love him. We had some good times together, too; smart conversation, lots of laughs, the best road trips I've ever taken. We weren't able to have children, but we opened our home to countless animals, some of which are still with me.

I guess my marriage was like everybody else's — some good, some bad. Like many other spouses, I decided to pull the plug when the bad overwhelmed the good.

Would I marry Ed all over again? Knowing what I know now, of course not. But I'm not sorry I did it that one time, nor am I sorry to be divorcing him, however sad I may be.  

Covered in dust, grime, and campaign buttons, I took a break from preparing for tomorrow's move to vote early. While I'm both concerned and excited about the presidential race, there was another issue on which I was eager to cast a ballot: the Florida Marriage Protection Amendment.

This proposal seeks to codify marriage as "the legal union of only one man and one woman."

I remember a conversation with a couple of coworkers shortly before I married Ed eight years ago. They congratulated me, and Osvaldo mentioned that another friend, Ernie, was married. I hadn't known that, so I congratulated him, finally noticing the plain gold band on his finger.

He shrugged, saying "As married as I can be." It was only then that I finally realized it wasn't possible for same-sex couples to marry. "That's bullshit!" I said.

I'd known gay men and lesbians all my life and had never considered their marital options. I guess I thought they just didn't want to marry. But Ernie and Justin had been together for years. They had the rings, but no spousal rights.

I was appalled.

I was raised Baptist, but a lot of church stuff didn't make sense to me, and I grew up to be a Buddhist. Like Sarah Palin, I tolerate a number of world views among those close to me.

I've asked devout Christians why Ernie and Justin can't get married and have yet to get an answer that I understand.

On the other hand, one of my conservative Christian friends surprised me by saying he opposes legal prohibitions against same-sex marriage. He thinks homosexuality is an abomination, but he also believes what happens in the bedrooms of consenting adults is not the business of government. 

I'm pretty sure that "protecting marriage" by forbidding it to Ernie and his boyfriend wouldn't do a thing to save my failed union with Ed or anybody else's. So it gave me great pleasure to vote against the proposal.

I passed my documents across the desk at Family Court Self Help, hoping I had filled in all of the blanks as instructed. After spending the better part of two days slogging through the bureaucratic snafu surrounding what Florida calls a "simple dissolution," my brains were fried.

The lady checked my papers one last time. "Perfect," she said, and gave me a big smile that said, "You are free to go."

At last. Thirteen months, $474, and five (count 'em) trips to the courthouse later, I've actually managed to file for divorce.

I'm not sure yet how I feel. I don't know how I thought I'd feel at this point.

There were times when I never thought I'd get here, that I'd live out my days just pretending not to be married any more. A year after I took off my ring I wasn't finding that so onerous, but the Good Doctor, who knows from several thousand dollars in personal experience, urged me not to be slack about legalities. She cautioned that Ed's creditors, from whom I still ignore the occasional phone call, might eventually get around to his wife.

Who? Oh. Oh yeah. That is still me, at least on paper, for a while. But the end is in sight.

Sometime in the next two months I'll get back my self-addressed, stamped envelope (they aren't kidding about that self-help thing) with a final hearing date. Maybe I'll feel something then.

Right now, though, my dog Lucky reminds me that it's time for a walk. Life goes on.

When what I believe to be the final divorce papers arrived for my signature this summer, I didn't feel exaltation.

I thought, when this happened, that it would be an occasion of skipping-and-hopping-delight — something like what it was like to finally get Jake's name off the bank account, only exponentially more so. Instead, I was kind of miserable.

Since I am in this new relationship — this relationship that's turning out to really mean something — I thought putting this final, legal closure on things would mean an extra little boost of freedom and happiness and celebration. Instead, it just felt like failure.

I know, in that logical part of myself, that I didn't fail, that it is not my fault, that this doesn't necessarily mean that I am incapable of making a relationship work, that this doesn't mean all relationships are inevitably doomed, but something about holding those papers in my hands sure makes it feel that way.

It's hard not to take this ending and feel that it might mean everything: That nothing will ever work out. That there is no such thing as real compatibility. That there is no such thing as forever. That I won't ever get more than a couple of years. That what I have now — this wonderful and perfect thing — will also drift into pieces until it becomes merely stilted conversation and paperwork.

I had thought, had hoped, signing these final papers would be liberating. That it would be exciting. That I would be joyful. But it's just sad, and I am just unhappy. 

Getting a settlement is handy. Since Jake owns a company, since the company is lucrative, since we were married for 10 years, and since he's not an asshole, mine is a decent one. More than decent, really. Because giving me what we determined is "my share" all at once would effectively close his company down, our arrangement is spread over the next five years.

This means that I can afford to stay in San Francisco. This means that I have some money to invest against the day the payments stop. This means I don't have to panic about money for the next little bit.

This also means that he and I are tied for the next five years.

I didn't want any money from him when we split. It felt wrong, somehow. It felt icky. I didn't want the tie. I'm rational enough to take it, but we're still in a relationship this way. This necessitates communication. There's a monthly reminder. It's a connection I don't like having.

Sometimes I wonder if the complete and absolute freedom would be worth it. But this money means that I am having a far, far, far easier time of it than other women in the same situation. With all I have to worry about, paying my bills is not, for the moment, one of them. So I feel enormously guilty for the bad feelings I have.

How do I not feel guilty for resenting this? How do I accept this help while hating the ties it makes and keeps?