2010.10.01
Days Remaining: 241
1. It's been 10 days since my last post, a lacuna far greater than I would have intended if I had planned it, instead of making a series of incremental decisions both active and passive resulting in posting nothing new. Some of it, I suppose, has been particular days that were chock-full of work. Some of it was feeling less than great due to the lingering effects of whatever respiratory infection I had last week (I'm still coughing wetly periodically). Some of it has been laziness. But most of it has been based substantially upon mood in its basest form: I've been out of sorts and sad off and on for days now.
2. I've commented, in direct conversation, to many of you that the most emotionally difficult part of my divorce has been leaving behind my dog, Herman. I sometimes wonder if missing Herman is somehow emblematic of, or encapsulates, the rest of the emotional turmoil that understandably attends a divorce. Maybe if I had been able to get custody of him I would have been sad about something else. My apartment is far too small for a 65 pound German Shepherd/Husky mix, and it would have been a major source of complications in making plans if I had him. But I really do find myself missing him tremendously. This was the case even when I was staying with my parents this summer, so I don't think it's just a specific focus of general loneliness. My ex-wife sent me a message and photo of Herman on Monday this week; she's begun giving him half a can of wet food as part of his dinner each night (he loves wet food, but we couldn't afford it as anything more than an occasional treat). I was kind of jealous, because I had suggested, last year, that maybe we should do this, but we were constrained by money at the time, and now she can do it (the cats eat wet food each meal because even with three cats, it's vastly less expensive than feeding a full grown dog). Apparently for the rest of that first night Herman would go back to his bowl repeatedly on the off chance that there was any more wet food that showed up while he was in another room.
3. I formally filed for divorce on Wednesday, finally. My money situation is such that I don't have a lot of spending cash on hand, and so I've been very careful to not make more trips to Providence than necessary. After my first, thwarted, attempt to file for divorce on 15 September (stopped cold by the fact that I didn't bring my Marriage Certificate with me to the Family Court - because when I called twice to ask what documentation I needed to bring, both times the persons with whom I spoke neglected to mention the Marriage Certificate), I had to a) find my Marriage Certificate buried in packed boxes and b) do another 120 mile round trip to file. I had a therapy appointment this past Wednesday morning and so that was when the filing would have to happen.
4. Though I was successful this time around, the process is almost comical in ways that it isn't easy. I was given an Instruction Sheet along with the forms and told to follow instructions closely, because there are parts of the forms that are supposed to only be filled in by the court personnel. So, okay. The forms were 14 pages long, and the Instruction Sheet's instructions stopped at Page 7. So I filled out everything I was told to do through Page 7, then went back up to the desk. Then I was informed that I needed to fill out Pages 8-14, and that I had left substantial portions of Pages 1-7 blank. When I pointed out that I had only filled out what the Instructions told me to fill out, the clerk was very unhappy with me. I cannot be the first person to have noted the Instruction Sheet's incompleteness, but in the clerk's eyes I was clearly at fault for having an Instruction Sheet that didn't work. So back I went to fill in the rest, including all of the places where the clerk marked Xs on Pages 1-7 to show what I had missed. Then, after doing this, I went back to the desk, and discovered I was still missing some things, including boxes she hadn't marked with an X (though, by this time, she was becoming generally nicer for some reason - maybe because she realized that I was there to file for divorce, something that is probably (not inevitably) emotionally difficult.
5. Then, when that was completed, she took my check for $120, my Marriage Certificate (they want the original for this process), and informed me that this "won't be filed today." She said I should call them on Friday to see if it was done yet, but no promises. And, of course, today I am not free to drive to and from Providence (at least 2.5 hours of traveling, parking, etc.), so I'll have to go back on Monday, if the forms are, in fact, filed by that time. Why do I need to go back? Because they won't mail them to the Sheriff's office to be served to my (not quite yet) ex-wife. I offered to give them the stamped envelopes etc, but they "don't do that." So I have to go back to pick up the forms and put them in a mailbox.
6. It took 10 minutes and $30 to get the marriage certificate. According to Delaware state law, you can actually just declare yourself married if you have the certificate. You don't even need an officiant. But if you want to get divorced, oh, the state will not make it simple (I doubt that they could ever make it easy). Granted, this process is complicated by my distance from Providence, but on general principle they should at the minimum make the correct information available and be able to provide a realistic timeline for the processing of the suit.
7. Anyway, I'm now much closer, in legal terms, to the formal dissolution of my marriage. I have never yet had a second thought about the correctness of my decision to leave. But I do go through periods of missing my ex-wife, and regretting that things have come to this. As I walked out of the courthouse on Wednesday afternoon, having just turned over the forms, my Marriage Certificate, and the processing fee (i.e., everything done in order and set to go), I said, out loud, "Goodbye, wife." I don't know if that was some sort of self-inflected melodrama or something else. But the sense of finality was really...immediate. I had done it, and this is where I am, now, formally and officially.
8. Classes are going well; in fact in some ways they're excellent, if exhausting (the lingering respiratory symptoms make lecturing for 5 straight hours difficult). I was asked to do two dorm talks this coming month on Halloween and ghosts. I did this last year, and they were apparently very popular. The second talk this time is probably going to be on Halloween itself, which is kind of neat. I've also been very encouraged by the slowly increasing number of students who have been coming to office hours or sending me emails wanting to discuss further things we talk about in class. It's not all of my students, but I really enjoy knowing that the classes motivate some of them to want more and to think further on their own.
9. There are a lot of other things I've been thinking about over the past week and a half, but I need to get to campus to grade essays, do office work, and then participate tonight in the dreaded Houndalympics (goes from 7pm-3am...sigh). I will work harder to not let the long gap between posts occur again.
10. Oh, and a shout out to my niece, Iunia, for being appointed Student of the Week at her kindergarten class, and to my nephew, Euander, for scoring a goal in a soccer game last weekend. I'm very proud of you both!
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