One Year & Counting

A year ago, I wished I had a time machine. I wished that I could press the fast forward button on my life. It was just 365 days ago that I thought life as I knew it was over... and it was.

As I walked out of the courthouse, I had to stop and catch my breath. The divorce was final. I was no longer Mrs. J-Fed. Ten years of laughter, tears, joy and pain were terminated with the swipe of a pen. Standing on the sidewalk, I was surrounded by swarms of people, yet I'd never felt so alone in my life. J-Fed and I had done everything together for almost a decade, but he wasn't there for the most monumental event of them all... the divorce. 

In fact, he likely didn't even know that our court date had come and gone. I recall standing in the driveway later that afternoon when he stopped by to see the kids. I stared at him, looking for some sign of regret, empathy, sadness. But all I saw was emptiness and indifference, as if it was just any other day. And for him, it was.

"We're divorced, you know?" I said matter-of-factly.

"Yeah, I know that," he responded.

"No, it's final. Today was the court date," I pointed out.

"Oh," he said.

My heart sank. I don't know what I expected. While he didn't shed a tear, it wasn't like he was doing backflips. I guess anything would have been better than nothing at all. I just couldn't understand how he could be so nonchalant about the whole thing. Our marriage had been dissolved, and all of those years that had passed by in the blink of an eye amounted to nothing more than an "oh."

The memory of that conversation is still fresh in my mind. I don't recall if I curled up in my bed and cried that night. Maybe tears rolled down my face. Perhaps I paced the floor, a ball of gut-wrenching anxiety. I'll likely never be able to remember. What I'm certain of is that I didn't know how I'd ever be able to move forward when I was mentally trapped reliving where it all went wrong.