Filing for Divorce...Finally!!!

After far too much dawdling, too much procrastination, and far too many perfectionistic tendencies, I am finally going to file my initial divorce papers in the morning.  I have them all printed up, ready to copy and file with the county Family Court.  Though I've had plenty of motivation, I've also had plenty of roadblocks...most of them psychological.  You see, I am the sort of person who wanted to just marry one man.  I figured I took enough time to find someone.  Turns out that he lied to me about really important things such as his past.  Deal-breaker stuff that would have prevented me from marrying him in the first place.

Apart from the unsavory skeletal lump in his closet, he got me into a situation where I trusted him and moved away from where I was living for many years.  I got hung up with his in-laws (I can only thank the good Lord that his parents were both deceased...his brother was enough of a headache to bear) and lost my sanity twice in three years.  Until I came to the decision to free myself from him, I actually believed that I could not do any better than this jerk.  I believed it when he said that no one else would love me like he did.  

Poison, poison and more poison.  I simply had enough.  

Still, it did take me long enough to get past my own shame--which he fed--and realize that his internal dramas were none of my concern.  I could make the most innocuous inquiry (such as asking him who was the last one who worked on the radiator of the car he gave me when he got a much nicer one for himself) and he would take offense as if I accused him of shtupping his own mother, or perhaps dressing up her corpse and talking to it--both of which he never did.  Yet his sense of moral outrage at the most non-critical question floored me for many years.  Then, I let go of that and rejected what he had become accustomed to between us: a co-dependent relationship.

We used to have such bitter feuds that it had to end once our daughter woke up scared and ran to me to hug me.  The only way to put distance between me and this anti-Prince Charming was to choose divorce.  Since I have no money, I have to do my own paperwork including the fee waver form required by the State of California.  Though there is plenty of fault to go around, I still live in a "no fault" divorce state and "irreconcilable differences" work for most any occasion when a marriage doesn't quite work out.

I won't say much about his past, but I will be quite happy once I get this whole thing in motion.  The hardest part was finding a friend willing to serve my future ex his walking papers--we've been physically separated since he had to account for his past--since I had to find someone in my church who was not opposed to my choice.  It's amazing how many well-meaning nitwits actually believe that marrying someone with a hideous secret was far better than having a baby out of wedlock.  Last time I checked, I didn't marry Robert Young back in the 1950's.  Not even on television. 

Six months from tomorrow, I'll be a free woman.  That won't mean that I'll be free to live a boundless single lifestyle.  Officially, I'll be a single mother even though I've been living like one for over three years now.  Afer all, I have every obligation to protect my daughter from strangers wishing to take advantage of my situation.  It means being brave, strong, and willing to live the rest of my life without a life partner.  Though I don't know if I will or won't ever meet a better man, I know that I can't throw caution to the wind anymore.  And I would never want to be with a man who would try to make me choose between being his lover and my being a mom.  I'm part of a package deal, though I'm not really looking for a new daddy for her.

After all, she needs to know that fish don't need bicycles.