Get through this, 'this' being divorce, with as much grace, kindness and respect as possible.

the first stage divorce papers, signed by both of us, are in the mail. The Hometown court will send us a date from which our six-month ‘consideration period’ starts, and after that, stage two divorce papers can be filed. The general mood in Casa Cranberries is light, relieved, considerate and friendly – more so than in months.

I find that I can be much fonder and more appreciative of my husband as a person now that I know I won’t have to be married to him or live with him for longer than this spring. And he seems to be doing very well these days. Hurrah for friendly divorces.

I came home and found out the internet hadn’t worked for the whole day, so naturally the hb hadn’t read my last appeal about signing the papers. After some dewonking, however, I got it to work. And so, after a while of me sitting on the sofa on needles and pins while he checked his emails, the hb said that he’d sent me a reply. (Yes, we truly are people who can’t actually talk to each other about difficult things. Thank you, email.)

- The message was brief: yes to cosigning the papers and yes to slowly starting to tell friends. I’m fighting back tears. I’m so relieved. I really really think we can get through this and come out friends.

Hurrah!!! A co-signed application!!!!!!!!!!! It really means so much to me (as one probably can tell from the exclamation marks).

Now, I’ll just need to fix the printer.

is not being able to tell people – anyone back in Bohemia, or most people here in Chicago. I promised him I wouldn’t, and I want to keep at least this promise, but… my mother hasn’t got a clue! Most of my greatest friends don’t know. And it builds such a wall and a feeling of being cut off from them, when I answer emails about how I’m doing with goddamned weather reports. I hate having such shadows over my life and having to hide in them. So much for wanting to become an International Woman of Mystery. I can do it, but it doesn’t make me happy.

But – deep sigh – this will not last forever. Come summer, there will be bright light. I’m so through with concealing things. I’d make an awful Henry James character.

When I got my Todoist page organized with my workflow coach back in January, he’d randomly put February 15th as the deadline for my personal goal “send in the divorce papers”. I remember thinking that was laughably far off and that I’d send them maybe a month before that. But, I haven’t.

This has nothing to do with me not wanting the divorce. I want it, but at the same time wish it had no existence, if that makes any sense. I fear the process, although that can’t be avoided. I just would be happier if we did this together, though I understand that’s a selfish wish and that I’ll just need to accept and carry the responsibility for making the divorce happen on my shoulders (but not the whole responsibility for the marriage disintegrating.) Anyway, yesterday evening when me & the husband were home awake at the same time which is a rare occurrence, I tried to open my mouth to ask him one last time about co-signing the papers. But I couldn’t get a word out. I just couldn’t.

So, I finally managed to write an email to him a minute ago – badly formulated, misspelled, completely uneloquent – about whether he’d consider one last time signing the papers. I’ll wait until the Sunday’s deadline if he doesn’t answer. It’s a completely arbitrary deadline, but now it’s there, it’s gained some gravitas. I wasted a month already. I want to send in the papers and start living towards the future. _{Please don’t talk to me ever again, anyone, if I’m here Monday and the papers are not in the mail.}

are pretty hard at the moment.

After the denial phase and two days of not speaking at all, my to be ex husband has progressed to the anger phase. I am failing in grace, kindness and respect, too, though I try really hard.

This is really… difficult.

through last night, of which I was truly grateful, but I was plagued by one of those never-ending nightmares that continue on and off through the night. I had a pile of stuff – notes, articles, lectures – that I was supposed to use for writing a scholarly article, but I couldn’t start because I couldn’t organize it, nor find a place to put it all. Like a hydra, the pile could not be kept under control.

On the surface, this seems like a classic beginning-of-term nightmare: a trasparent dream about the guilt of not writing and being organized enough. But (darn those psychoanalysis lectures I listened to last autumn) if the subconscious really is shaped linguistically, I wonder whether mine is actually trying to tell me something else. Like “file those papers”. You know, those papers.

He did not want to sign the divorce application.

As I feared, he had chosen to ignore the divorce conversation two months ago, maybe just hoping it’d all go away. Again, it’s very hard to talk when the other party says nearly nothing. He said he thought marriage means trying, and that I’m giving up way too early. That, of course, hurt.

I guess he could have done some trying himself in the last two years or so, though. I can’t believe how physically beat up I’ve been feeling after that conversation (which led nowhere). I tried reiterating the reasons I need to leave. I don’t think he got it. I staggered to bed and spent five hours there, alternately looking at the ceiling and sleeping until I forced myself to go to the grocery store. In the evening, he brought me chocolate and a magazine again. It’s heartbreaking. But it is too little too late. I know it’s me who’s leaving, and I’ll have to learn to live with that guilt. But I can’t live the rest of my life like this, without intimacy and without communication. I really do feel I’ll sink under if I don’t cut myself free.

It’s not just me selfishly wanting something more, it’s needing something more to survive.

I can apply for the divorce alone. It just would have felt right to have agreed to us both signing the application. I don’t know what I’ll do with that. I’ll figure it out.

::plunge::

and, just because my life tends to be odd, finished it by watching Forgetting Sarah Marshall together with husband (a raunchy Judd Apatow comedy about a man dumped by his long-time girlfriend and trying to get over his total heartbreak.) Actually, great film choice from him. We both laughed. (I cried a bit behind a blanket during some scenes.) I’m hoping this might be an unspoken Bohemian version of catharctic working through things, since we don’t actually… discuss the divorce at all. Very very big elephant in the living room.

But, we got through Christmas. Next hurdle: signing divorce application.

The university friend we were going to spend Christmas with has, suddenly, fallen in love and is (with many apologies to us) going to go on a madcap love adventure and spend Christmas in New Jersey with her brand new beloved’s family. :D

I could only thoroughly applaud this scheme, though it means a Christmas with just me and future ex-husband. However, I am determined that this shall not be awful. I have just purchased a modest Christmas present for myself (a crossword puzzle dictionary and a book of easy NY Times crossword puzzles. After learning to understand American football, I need new intellectual challenges.) And I will suggest that we go to the casino over the state line during the holidays, just to get out of the apartment. And there is Christmas dinner at slightly scary VIP professor’s house. This will just be an odd kind of Christmas, that’s all. I’ll just keep my eye on the ball and get through this, and next year… Next year will be better.