June 6 would have been my 16th wedding anniversary. Instead, June 7 is now my 15th divorce anniversary.
People see that and think it’s pathetic. I must have rushed into marriage, chose poorly. Yes and yes. But I did marry a man I knew for seven years, a man I was best friends with for three years before we “hooked up” for the final time, who I talked on the phone with on an almost daily basis for over a year before we started dating and then got engaged.
I think at 23, I was scared no one would ever want me, but I wasn’t quite desperate. I firmly believed that life owed me a partner and a happily ever after. I survived my childhood by clinging to the one hope of just one person to call my own. And here he was, one man who seemed to suddenly look at me (after years of me chasing him) and say, “You. You’re exactly what I want.” And he said it exactly long enough to get the engagement ring on my finger, get me to quit my job and move in with him. The closer the wedding day came, the more he let me know that I wasn’t at all what he wanted, but if I could just change my behavior ever so slightly I’d become good enough. Mere days after the wedding the reconstruction efforts of Mary began in earnest. I’d never be warned in advance what he hated about me. The news flash would come immediately after my infraction, usually involving screaming, or being spit at, or being thrown against the wall. His rages were always my fault. If I could just talk different, think different, and be a totally different person. I’d be exactly what he wanted.
So I practiced, took mental notes, stayed awake all night planning every word out of my mouth for the next day. But my corrected behavior wasn’t good enough either. Seems that even being exactly what he wanted, I was nothing he wanted.
15 years of hindsight and now I can’t honestly pin down exactly what he was really thinking when he picked me. I’m no pushover (or wouldn’t be for long). Why marriage, why me? Was he trying to escape his stalker ex-girlfriend? Was he looking for a woman to give him the love his mother never did, only to discover that no human being could make up for that hurt? Was he looking to feel better about himself by having a real, live human to call his own so he could kill them a little bit day by day? Who knows, and now blessedly not my problem.
But I still can’t wrap my mind around why people don’t see what gift it is when someone stops dead in their tracks, looks at you and says, “You. It’s you that I want to share every day with until I die.” I don’t understand why people think such an honor is owed to them, why they don’t see it as the miracle it is. The compliment it is. It’s like how a baby looks at you without a hint of realization that you could drop them, that’s the trust a person puts in their partner when they marry. Once someone hands you the keys to every day they will ever live from the wedding day on, why do many people think this is nothing worth fighting for, worth tending to?
We’ll take a financial planning seminar but refuse to go to marriage counseling. We’ll fight for a parking space but when it comes to our relationships, divorce is easier than fighting for our marriages. I’m not talking about the big, horrid horrible marriages. Divorce has it’s place - I know I’d be a murder victim without it. I’m talking about the bigger tragedies of divorce. The marriages that whithered on the vine. The slow spiral into onesselves, the hurts left undoctored. Taking for granted, being selfish, keeping score, not pitching in… We take that one person who said, “I love you above everyone else, forever!” and we don’t throw them away with both hands. But we do let them sit in the rain and rust away from neglect.
I can’t imagine anyone looking at me and saying, “You bring me joy. Let’s spend the rest of our lives bringing each other joy. You are exactly what I’ve been looking for.” But if I ever get that lucky, I hope I remember how fragile that is, and spend every day tending to it. And I hope that man would make even half that effort.
Because it’s exactly what we all deserve, and it’s more than any of us deserve.
* * * * *
At the wedding reception, I remember the best man making a short toast. I don’t remember what the toast was, but I remember him ending it by screaming, “GO PENGUINS IN ‘92!” The 92-93 season of my marriage was a losing season. I wonder how the Penguins did? 
An Arizona rabbit rescue group - Rascally Rabbit Rescue and Critter Haven of Arizona, Inc. - needs some fundraising help. Remember, this time of year all of the Easter bunnies Preppy McObnoxious bought for their pwessius children are now being abandoned. You can help their efforts, and get something for yourself too.
I spent the past three days working 20 hours and coming home to read two of Haven Kimmel’s books cover-to-cover.
In Kimmel’s follow-up novel, She Got Up Off the Couch, the author explores her mother’s character even more. The reader becomes sympathetic to the mother, later proud of her, but in the background wholly disappointed in a woman who couldn’t even be bothered to make sure her child was bathed and had clean clothes. In the modern times and big city life of today, I wonder if Zippy would have spent some time in foster care. But not in Mooreland, Indiana in the 1970’s. Neighbors and her friends’ mothers would take her in, wash her clothes, give her a bath, feed her, and send her home. The author doesn’t reveal if she ever felt any shame over this.
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