Benediction

Remember that part at the end of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation where Clark Griswold goes on a rant about his boss?  That's how I felt walking out of my divorce settlement conference tonight.  It's over.  The papers are signed. The orders are written.  It's over.  Hallelujah!  Holy shit!  Where's the Tylenol?I wrote this last night and it's a good thing because I am completely spent tonight.

On this, what I suspect will be, my last evening as a married woman, I want to write a little about what my marriage meant to me.  I entered into it as a smart, naive, 20-year-old woman.  I intended it to last forever.  I was willing to work, and I worked.  Oh, how I worked.  I poured every bit of work I could muster into this.  I reduced myself to putty to fill in the holes and surround the sharp edges.

I worked.  I learned several occupations.  I learned finances, grocery shopping, cooking, laundry, housework.  I learned how to navigate medical insurance and billing.  I learned how to live with less.  I learned how to change a car tire and patch a bicycle tire.  I learned how to shovel snow.  I learned to trust an old car.

I traveled.  I learned how to live with the contents of a backpack.  How to show up in a foreign city without a place to stay and trust that I would find one.  I learned how to navigate the country with an atlas.  I learned to sleep in places I never imagined I would.  I learned to walk.  I learned to carry a heavy load.  I learned how to endure heat and cold.  I learned how to start a fire and fire a gun.  I learned not to be scared as I walked in the woods alone.  I learned how to paddle a canoe and bait a hook.  I learned to notice the birds in the sky and the fish in the river.

I studied.  I worked more. 

But mostly I waited.  And the sun set as I was waiting and then it became dark and I knew it was time to be done.  So I walked away, into the night, into the most painful and fearful moments of my life.  And in this dark, I have learned to trust myself.  Even that naive young woman who decided to jump on a ship that would ultimately descend beneath the waves.  I have been changed for good.