I had a day. I’m not sure if it was a bad day or not. Someone put my huge front yard planter of flowers into my own wheelbarrow and rolled off with it, for starters – Father’s Day presumably was the motivator. I liked those flowers, yet I do like to give presents. I hope somebody was delighted by them. But I have also an urge to slap the shit outa the person who did that, which makes me feel ungenerous while being violated = kinda icky. I’m gonna try harder to feel like I donated it. (hrrmph)

Then I had what was to be my last pre-filing mediation counsel meeting, the decree to come by mail shortly hereafter. Buuuuut it turns out that if I’d rather, although it would be more time and money, I can file for nullification in WI instead. That is, by WI state law, I was never legally married to X, so . . . so there ya go. We’re in the last weeks of a marriage that doesn’t exist actually. I could ignore that or not. I could undo it, or break it. Further, the reason why this is the case is that, though we lived apart for most of that time, I was technically married to Mark for a decade (i.e. until just 3 weeks prior to my marriage, and hence the illegality because there was supposed to have been a minimum of 6 months) . . . aaaaaand just prior our split, Mark got in a car wreck and got another DUI. So, again, by the laws of that state, it was my choice to nullify or divorce because undisclosed substance abuse is a grounds for annulment (I had no idea he was still drinking then). It feels uncanny that I could have been always married, or never. Still, I actually don’t mind having been married to Mark. We were kids, and we birthed each other into adulthood as well as we could. His worst offense is smoking pot all day and talking to flora, harmful to nobody but himself. He never intentionally frightened me – he kind of stands out that way as it turns out.

X, though, is a different story. He is the darkest mirror I look into.


I need to believe in the things I believe in. I believe that regret is a sin, for lack of a better word for it. It is self-betrayal, and thus detrimental to the soul. It is a waste of time, and thus disrespectful to time. It is a disavowal of all the effects of every decision – some of these being obviously desirable, like the little boys I have, which to regret would appall me; moreover though, such a disavowal presumes that I could know and understand the range of those effects fully, which would be arrogant as I am not God. If I did not believe these things, I would risk bitterness. I would dwell on the way language became an unsafe place for me, a ring of fire that I cowered in.

Maybe in that cheerful Wisconsin voice at the Clerk of Courts office, I heard the universe offering me a way to not have been bound in covenant to that after all.