Yesterday was a frustrating day.
Stbx and I had our court date to finalize the divorce. Now, we've been doing this ourselves since we can't afford to hire a lawyer (translation: I've been doing the work, stbx trusts me to handle these sorts of things and I take them on willingly -- it's how it's always been.)
Long story short, I did not prepare the correct paperwork and we learned we had to reschedule. We were both upset and irritated by the delay but by the end of the ride back to his place, we had begun taking out our frustrations on the convoluted, confusing court system with a series of joking/ranty comments.
He soothed my frayed nerves and my feelings of idiocy by telling me he was impressed by the inroads I'd made in understanding everything so far without the help of a lawyer. I deeply appreciated his encouragement. We veered off on other topics and somewhere in the midst of all the laughing and joking about weird TV shows and sharing our long-ingrained dual senses of humor, I began to cry.
What made me cry was the realization that of all the humans on the planet, he was still really the only one that truly knows and gets me deeply. More than all my friends -- whom I can laugh with and enjoy time with but who are intrinsically "other" -- he was more than just my friend. He was the rungs on my ladder, the other side of my scale. I really felt at gut-level all the things that I was losing. He looked at me and all I could manage to say was, "I miss you."
He knew what I meant. I tried to pull myself together as he quietly told me that he'd had to take the day previous off work after I'd called to tell him about the court date, that he couldn't concentrate at work after that. We spoke of feeling like failures. We spoke of 20 years of togetherness that now had to somehow be changed. We spoke of things like getting back together and knowing that it would go back to the way it was before whether it took a year, or 2, or 5 to do so. He said he had been so miserable during that time and he didn't want to voluntarily go through all that again. We spoke of the need to have the hope that eventually the pain would recede and all the other things -- the good things -- that we had, and have, would rise to the top like so much rich cream.
So we're still married. It'll be that way for another week while we get another court date set up.
I know he's right. But I do miss him.
((Song: "How's It Going To Be?" by Third Eye Blind. Lyrics here:
http://artists.letssingit.com/third-eye-blind-lyrics-hows-it-going-to-be-7tx7xf4 ))
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