Severance

9 years. I’ve been married for 9 years. It will be 10 in September. Well, no it won’t. Not if I sign the divorce papers in front of me. They aren’t a surprise, not really. He left the house over a month ago and – wait no, that’s not right.

Anyway, I tried to listen. To understand. To make it work. To be happy. To adapt. To help. To support. But I can’t love. Not in that way; not in the way that it matters most. I feel guilty for making it all about me. For making another problem in an already difficult situation. For ruining 9 years of marriage and an even longer partnership. Maybe we could stay friends. That’s what he wants and I – damn. I’m getting it wrong again. Why is it so arduous to remember? Why do I keep making the same mistake over and over?

Every relationship has its troubles. Everyone knows that. At first it was hard and jarring but I tried to pretend it was mere turbulence and that we’d get through it. But I just can’t. I can’t pretend that nothing has changed, that a part of the connection hasn’t been cut, that I haven’t been cleaved in two and left to sew myself back together. Still, it’s not all about me. It takes two, right? And these feelings must be nothing compared to what he is going through. I can’t even begin to imagine how he – there I go again.

She.

Nothing quite turns your life upside down like having your husband tell you that he is a woman. That he always has been, and that he always will be. Nothing quite kills your marriage like suddenly being married to a woman when you just don’t like women like that.

The longer I look at the divorce papers the less real they seem. Everything has changed and blurred and disappeared lately – why can’t these papers vanish too?

She even sent me a $20,000 cheque with them in a plea not to dispute the petition. Said this was from her savings and that I could keep the car. She always has been tremendously generous and kind, but I still can’t help but be stunned. I wasn’t expecting her to be so pragmatic about it all, I wasn’t expecting to be so emotional. Well, in my defence, I wasn’t expecting any of this at all.

We’ll have to sell the house but it’s too big for just one person anyway. Too big and empty, but at the same time full of lost memories and suddenly impossible futures. She said she wants to move on and start a new life as a new person. As who she really is. Yet I can’t help but mourn the old. The man I loved, my marriage, the life I was living and my dreams; all gone with one revelation.

The only thing she asked for was the memory album I’ve kept over the years. It's a little notebook I used to write short poems in, scribble silly romantic song lyrics, and where I wrote my wedding vows. It is plain and unassuming on the exterior, but inside it contains all of my love for my husband. It's a little black book of memories that charts our life together. I filled it polaroids and ticket stubs and anecdotes over the years. It is a testimony to our life as a happily married couple. Our old life as a happily married couple. Soon to be unmarried couple. Not even a couple. I’m not sure I can keep up with who I am anymore, and I’m not the one going through a major identity change.

As far as I’m concerned, the book is already hers. She deserves it, and I don’t.