Good Morning! Well I am back at my desk and feeling good. Yesterday was a non-event (isn't it funny how we make such a big deal out of things). My soon to be ex showed up this time but unfortunately he is such a johnny one note. "I'm broke, I have no car, I can't read, I don't want anything why do I have to be here" (of course he doesn't want anything, it's the community debt that's at issue and I'm not taking all that even to get rid of his lazy butt). He was there sans girlfriend which was a surprise but although he claimed to have no vehicle I didn't see him hoofing his way from the courthouse on my way out so he had a ride from somewhere. I suspect it has finally occured to them that she is not a help to his case (her inability to control herself at the last hearing they showed up to did not go over well with the Judge.)

Other than a slightly elevated heart rate I was fine. He seems more sad to me than anything. Strange things occur to you in the surreal setting of "marriage dissolution". He wore the gray long-sleeved mock turtle-neck shirt I bought for him to wear with the camel hair jacket I insisted we buy for him. He wore the two of them coupled with nice black dress pants and impressed his entire family at a cousins wedding. He was beaming claiming he had never outdressed his very preppie brother before. The whole memory flashed through my head as I felt him staring at me. I did not allow him to catch my eye and he scurried away (even with his "limp" and cane it still felt like scurrying) immediatly after the hearing.

OK, the result of the hearing? Another 30+ days to file the paperwork he should have filed ages ago. If he doesn't manage to do that we will proceed to a default hearing where the judge will decide if my division of property and debt is fair and then award accordingly. I have been very fair so I expect he will rule in my favor.

I can let all this go (except for the one night a week I spend sifting through the remains of my dead marriage and sorting through the "stuff" that I accumulated during my 20 years on my own). I carefully put aside the things that are his to return to him when this is over and downsize my own posessions to a more managable collection. I have four catagories to my sort:

1) His

2) Mine

3) Mine that I have no need for.

4) Pieces of our life together that I do not know what to do with.

I am leaning in the direction of simply packing the box sealing it shut and leaving it alone. A much older and wiser friend recently shared about his seabag which was packed with memories he couldn't deal with at the time but that time has a way of softening the edges of the sharpest knives. I don't know if I will ever want to look through the box as my friend did his seabag but I think that if I allow my raw emotions to choose for me I may regret it someday.

I am the sum of my experiences good and bad and and I do not wish for a spotless mind. I will however be happy when the reality of my divorce is no longer like a scab that continues to be picked at and never allowed to completely heal. This is why so many are scarred from the process. I don't know how bad the scar will be in the end but I don't believe it will dwarf the other scars all that much. Just another war wound of life.

I wish you Peace

~alison~

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