D-I-V-O-R-C-E

So it is oddly comforting to know that my enduring little bordering-on-irreverent battle with Madame Church Lady will outlast whatever else is going on in my life. Hell, high water. Mostly Hell.

But the rest of it is up-ended in a way that is unfamiliar.

When I started seeing J., as I stated, it was at a particularly acrimonious time in my divorce. Lars had not even “left the marital residence” yet, and had not even committed to doing so. And I was not leaving the house that I had lovingly restored to its original beauty in spite of his artistic interference. No. It was my kids’ home and he’d have to burn it down to get me to leave it. I know they say that “Home is where Mom is,” and that could be a cardboard box, but, come on! When you are 8 and 7, Mom has a pull like gravity for sure, but home is where your Playstation is.

So the day he’d cancelled my credit card, and cleaned out our bank account and acted like he’d had a right to do so and therefore I should not be worried that he’d do anything really untoward, because those things didn’t qualify as sneaky and underhanded, I’d moved to the third floor.

The third floor that thankfully, and coincidentally, had been finished just months before…the finishing touches completed the day after my Dad had died.

And that is how we more or less peaceably co-existed for a few months. Staying out of each other’s way when we could. Spying on each other for dirt we could tell our lawyers. Even if I did have to constantly remind him to put on a robe.

And while it was excruciating to endure his now very aggressive bullying, and manipulating the children, to get through it with the best outcome, I knew I could endure almost anything.
But then I sent that Christmas card to J.’s mom and she’d called to ask if I’d lost my freakin’ mind, and I told her that I hadn’t and gave the perfectly reasonable excuse that I was getting divorced and learned that J. was too.

And I was thinking…

Even though I’d had the shocking realization that even if I had to live a life of full-on Miss Haversham solitude with only the company of my children and then later, some cats, I still would leave Lars.

And even though I was like a zombie on the best of days, sleeplessness becoming an actual lifestyle, and had no idea how the rules of dating had changed since I’d last had one (the ones with the cretin can’t really be counted when graded on a curve), I would like to venture out once in a while and maybe even test the waters.

But considering that most of my friends were married or in committed relationships and spent most of their time doing couply things, I was sort of off the social grid.

So I suggested to J.’s mom that she let J. know he can call me. We’d go out for a beer and play “Can you believe my spouse did this?” now that there had been sufficient time to have found humor in things like his humiliating me at a work function or her YouTube worthy temper tantrum over the way her Christmas gift had been wrapped.

Perhaps if we were each other’s steady-ender for a while, we could be each other’s scout too. Get our games on and go out together and tell each other who was noticing whom. Or who commented about whom. Or who had mint from the mojito in his or her teeth before anyone else noticed. Or even just introduce each other to friends to widen the social circles that had contracted somewhat during our marriages – and even further now that folks had begun to feel that they had to take sides.

This could be good. Merry Christmas to me.