My mom and I took the train down early. We sat in the station for a few minutes debating whether either of us had the stomach for a coffee (for me) or a soda (for her). Turns out we didn’t.

Walking those blocks to the courthouse, I talked to her about how much I missed working in the city. I retold the story of how during my first week working downtown I’d run into the same man in a wheelchair sitting on the west end of the bridge crossing the river, shaking a cup of change. My only recently urbanized heart couldn’t help but crack the teeniest bit every morning I walked past, sympathy and a genuine desire to help seeping out, slowly. After two weeks, I stuck a twenty dollar bill in his hand one morning, making a note to myself to continue giving. “But I didn’t,” I admitted to my Mom, wondering if these broken promises to help others is why everything I’ve ever held dear eventually slips through my hands. K., first. O., later.

The guards at the metal detectors were cold and unhelpful, unenthusiastically pointing toward a bank of elevators when I asked how to get to courtroom 1206A. I’m not sure what I expected, certainly not a pat on the shoulder or a wink and a “keep your chin up,” but something perhaps slightly more endearing then a flick of the hand.

I was the first to arrive at the courtroom, 15 minutes early, only shortly before two lawyers discussing a contentious divorce. Husband and wife unable to tolerate one another; husband hiding money so he doesn’t have to pay child support; girlfriends showing up with new jewelry and new cars while wife waits for thousands of dollars for the care of their children. I silently catalog the exchange for when I need to remember how to handle myself; when I need to stop spitting venom.

My lawyer shows up, explains what will happen, and, when we’re called, I take my seat as she lobs question after question to me. What is your name? Were you married on May 26, 2006? What seem an endless string of minor details require only a yes or no answer, but I still feel like I have to bite my tongue so I don’t accidentally shout “Yes, yes, Jesus Christ I’ve answered all this shit before, can’t anything just be simple?” I politely stare at the court reporter so she can get all of the words correct, and when the judge tells me he’s granted me a divorce, I glance back at my mom, who looks almost as sad as she did on the day we buried K.

The thing that really gets me, the reality I can’t stop thinking about sometimes, is that he didn’t lift a finger to stop this boulder from rolling right over our lives. He watched, uselessly, from the sidelines as I methodically dissembled our marriage, our commitment, losing everything with one swift crack of a stranger’s gavel.

O. and I go in circles.

Understanding chasing missed

opportunity to reconcile what

has always gone wrong for us,

somehow. Me, talking in ways

and with words that sail past his

ears to land somewhere behind, far off

in a heap, rusted and sharp. And I

wonder, always curious, if our

tongues have never spoken the same

language, our ears deaf to the other’s

call. Too separate, too far gone to

make it back, whole, one, from two.

My mom has asked me the same question more than once. More than twice, even. Whenever we talk about what is happening, my eyes fill, hers following shortly, and then she looks at me: “Are you sure you want to divorce?” No one saw what has happened to O. and I coming, least of all my mom. She’d always tell her friends that we were made for one another. “They have the same sense of humor,” she’d laugh. “They like the same things.”

We did. We do. Stranded in the muck, looking for something to hold onto, I tell her that No, I don’t want a divorce, but to turn back now would seem something akin to letting O. get away with something, helping him believe that somehow what happened, his part in what happened, is okay.

My counselor has let me know that there should be consequences. O. should be held accountable. Too much of what happened, even before the implosion of my marriage, was chalked up to the myriad things that had gone awry for O. I always wanted to be someone he could count on; I willed him to understand that I would never turn my back as so many others had. But not turning my back meant never taking shelter, and never saying enough is enough gave him reason to believe his behavior, though bad, wasn’t bad.

The cost to me was my belief that I was worth more.

The rub is that describing O. this way paints him into a corner he doesn’t entirely deserve. There were good times; there still is genuine affection. For all the wrongs, the misguided words, the emotional warfare, there were also long hugs, deep kisses and smiling sentiments that grounded me.

Reconciling these two opposing forces has proved difficult. Like a coin that spins between head and tails I’ve always wanted O. to land on the side that feeds his love of not only his life, but all he has in it.

There are nights I lay in bed, awaken unexpectedly and for no reason I can discern, to stare at my ceiling. Some nights, when I think of O. and I, the reality of the divorce seems like a hazy, distant mirage that flutters in and out of focus. In the dark, my dog resting next to my leg, the thought of us no longer being married seems impossible and a deep ache starts at my heart and stretches to my stomach.

Strangely, though I wanted to be married, it didn’t really mean anything life changing to me. I always thought that a piece of paper wouldn’t change my feelings, and my desire was, I believe, more about wanting to be someone’s wife. I always liked the sound of “This is my wife, Michelle.” Not in a give-up-my-identity kind of way, but in a two peas in a pod or partners in crime sensibility.

But now, with divorce looming, the meaning of marriage seems rife with sentiment and symbolism, more than a piece of paper can possibly represent.

When K. died, I remember sitting on my parents’ back porch, staring out at the trees, absently listening to the birds chatter at one another. When my mother came to sit by me, tears were streaming down my face, and I asked her, quite simply, “Am I single now?” I imagine her heart broke when she spoke the words, “Yes, I suppose you are.”

True then, true now. And perhaps just as painful.

I’ve been going to therapy weekly since O. came home and asked me for a divorce. C., the woman I see every Saturday morning, has special insight, as she is who was seeing O. and I when we briefly tried marriage counseling.

Because C. understands O. and what we’ve been through, talking to her is especially enlightening. I can tell her about some of the behaviors and worries I have, ask her questions about O.’s diagnosis of bi-polar disorder, and know that she will give me all the information she can. Perhaps without trying, she gives me comfort by helping me wade through the distrust and anger that floats right alongside my hope and optimism.

What I’ve uncovered these past months is that the end of my marriage is ambiguous. “I feel like we had a photo finish,” I’ve told her on more than one occasion. “I’m not completely convince the marriage couldn’t have been saved.”

And I’m not, my mind cluttered with more than a few ways things could have been different. But they didn’t, and the reality of the situation is where I am now. “O. is not a terrible person,” C. has often reminded me. “I think it’s understandable that you feel conflicted.”

There is something more that tugs at me, though. A little piece of me that still believes that O. and I belong together, that we understand one another in a way I find it hard to believe I’ll ever have with someone else. “Of course you feel that way now,” C. always interjects. “Your divorce isn’t even final.”

She is right, I know. She mentions the passing of time, and I know that, too. I’ve been dependent on the the healing power of time on more than one occasion, jumping weeks and years into the future where I could see the pain dissipate.

There are no answers right now. There is no way to tell myself that I’ll be okay, somehow, even though I know this to be true. I understand the depths of my resilience, am intimately acquainted with my strength. But, but, but … watching that second hand chase it’s tail across the face of every clock only reinforces the knowledge of how slowly time passes, of how long you can wait for healing.

His eye was still blackened when he left the hospital, hopped on a train and headed home. The bruise was fading, but the mark of self-injury was still obvious, even to those who didn’t know what they were seeing.

He called to tell me he’d been released, and to be honest, I couldn’t believe it. The severity of what was happening to him just three days prior seemed to heavy a burden to simply lay down, but he assured me he was good, better than he’d been in a long time.

I don’t remember the exact words, but he said he wanted to talk to me about something. “We should wait until your home from work,” he explained. My heart stopped, and I knew that going home would mean facing words I wasn’t sure I was prepared to hear. Divorce, ending, sorry.

And I was right, though he said these words in a much more casual, somehow caustic way, dismissing me with a question he’d already answered for himself: ”So, we’re done?”

That day is still fresh in my memory, taunting me at times, stealing bits of my confidence and forcing me to catch my breath. I needed to re-evaluate what had seemed so fundamental and chart a new geography where words like single and parent and divorced would come to describe me.

Some members of my family think my benevolence toward O. is unwarranted and undeserved. They witnessed the waves of sadness that washed over me in those first few months after O. asked for a divorce, and they will probably always hold him accountable. And I don’t blame them for that, as their love for me is what makes forgiving such a gargantuan task.

But they don’t know the years between O. and I the same way I do. Just as I can’t pretend to know how other marriages are weaved together, the give and take involved in creating a single pattern from varying, patchwork threads. The history O. and I have didn’t evaporate and still stands somewhere near me, hovering in the back of my mind.

All of this to say that our divorce is filled with moments of confusion, jumbled thoughts and emotions that seem to push and pull my resolve. Understanding the need to let go without completely understanding how we got here. I’ve been dropped in an undisclosed location with no road map, not sure how I arrived, less sure of the path to blue skies and sun.

I am not sure anymore that anything I am doing is right. Oddly, this hasn’t translated into a lack of self-confidence, because I forge my own path with what is happening between O. and I and very rarely spend any amount of time second-guessing my instincts — like I did when you died.

My whole being was tied into a question mark when you died. Every day greeting me with a new question: Does he still love me? Has he found someone else where he is? Does he know how much I love him? Could I have prevented his death? Nothing was sound anymore; my reality was experience a perpetual earthquake. Even when I thought I was standing on solid ground, something or someone would come along and remind me that everything was in flux, shifting and rearranging at will.

Perhaps that is the difference I am sensing. The divorce isn’t destabilizing me in the same way your death did. I don’t feel as unsteady, don’t have the constant questions poking the back of my mind, insistent in their perseverance.

Maybe, too, that’s why letting you go has been so difficult. I feel almost like I can’t let you go before I know all the answers to all of these questions. Even the knowledge of the impossibility of ever having answers doesn’t stop me, like a difficult puzzle I stare it instead of setting aside.

And, at the end of the day, there is a real fear inside me that somehow equates letting you go, giving us both our freedom, with no longer loving or being loved. Why can’t I acknowledge the beauty of having loved you without shackling myself to my memories?

I spin round and round and still wonder, tossing questions to the ether, hoping for a response. Waiting for release, relief.

It’s easy, when you feel like you’re stuck at the edges of a hurricane, to forget the calmness of its center. Some days, I have to consciously pull myself back to the middle and force myself to recognize that amongst the chaos, there is a beautiful rhythm about my life, a steady heartbeat, thump-thump-thump, that keeps time, relaxes me into moments that let me forget the wind whipping around me.

This little girl, this tiny piece of heaven on earth, reminds me every day that you don’t have to trek miles and miles to find peace. Sometimes getting to the eye of the storm is as simple as taking the time to have a look around.

I know, somewhere deep inside, that O. didn’t mean to hurt me. On the days I am very honest, letting a little light into the depths, I can even shoulder some of the blame — very little, but still. Well, maybe I can shoulder some of the blame.

Since we’ve decided to divorce, O. has made attempts at being kind. He’s offered to do things for me, asks how I am in a voice that suggests he actually cares what I answer and generally just behaves as though I matter. But considering what has passed between us, not to mention what has passed between him and C., I can’t quite bring myself to be generous with my responses and reactions to him all the time.

Some days are better than others. I can ball the bitterness up and throw it away from myself, giving me some time and space to actually entertain the thought of being kind to O. On these days, I ask him how he is in a voice that suggests I actually care, offer him some of his daughter’s artwork, even though it was me who took the time to paint with her, and maybe even invite him to stay for dinner.

Other times, I store the venom in my cheeks and spit it out at him in short bursts. He’ll offer to download a movie for me, for example, and I not-so-subtly suggest that I don’t want him to do anything to my computer. Or he’ll bring me something small, like a burrito, and I’ll mumble my thanks while looking away instead of meeting his eyes, as though I’m thankful, but not really. My aim is straight at the heart — I want him to hurt. Period.

I am finding it very hard to find a balance or to choose one path or the other. I can’t seem to decide between a tenuous truce or outright indifference. Being pulled in these directions is only difficult for me, or, at the very least, more difficult for me. O. can feel dismayed at my ever-changing disposition, but he doesn’t have to feel the anger pool in his stomach, or the happiness and regret take center stage in his heart.

And, when I look at my daughter and think how I have to find a way to do what is best for her, I know the truce is more palatable, shows a strength of character I’d like to think I have. He is, after all, always going to be her dad — and I never want her to feel as though there is anything wrong with loving him.

But the trick is finding a way to take this anger and set it free, or at the least put it to use in a way that doesn’t require hurting someone else. The road to forgiveness, gosh, I’m not even sure where it is. But I do know I need to detour from this path I’m on, to turn around, take a hard right or something. Otherwise I risk flooring it off the edge of the canyon, free falling into a life marked only by how hard I’ve made it.

It’s true what they say about laughter — it is the best medicine. These days, I sometimes have a hard time remembering to find moments that require, or at least offer the potential of eliciting, laughter. Even when I force myself to squeeze and squeeze this sour situation into something sweet (lemons into lemonade), I can too often let myself slip, my face distorted with the tart realization of where I am.

Ok. Enough with the lemons.

The point remains the same. I remind myself every day of what I have to be grateful for, but sometimes can’t help but peer over the edge of what feels like a bottomless void. My urge to scream is palpable at times; I want to hear my voice echo back to me that everything will be just fine, as it should be, as it was always meant to be.

Lately, I’ve taken to spending my Friday nights exploring iTunes for movies and shows, anything that will let me just sit and laugh. Sometimes I make myself some popcorn, other times I might have a glass of wine or beer — but whatever the choice, I anticipate this time, look forward to letting myself exhale.

Though I am a fairly serious person and have seen my share of experiences that require serious response, I grew up in a hilarious family. Sure, there were moments, as always, but I have a great deal of laughter stored in my memory banks, too. Stills and short movies of laughing so hard my belly ached or I had to stop to catch my breadth.

True, I may have to seek out my sources of funny these days. Perhaps the natural laughter offered up by life is a little harder to find, hiding, just out of reach. But that’s temporary, I know. Laughing is the thread that runs through me, tying together everything else, weaving the pattern of my life with shades of gray and bright, bold hues.

I’ve got my sense of humor in my sights; I know enough to miss it, and that’s something.