Back to the Beginning

On September 25th, 2010 I was married. It retrospect, this was not a good decision. The problem is that I knew this was a bad decision. Psychology, codependent, something psychology I did it anyway. Today, my divorce was mercifully finalized more than a year after I initially filed. This was confirmed by texting my attorney. It was a year of many, many delays, filings of contempt, and her absurdly fighting, lying, hiding assets, lots of money spent to bring this all to light. In the end, she settled on the exact same deal I offered her they day I left her, and screwing myself out of many joint assets. The rational then, just as it is now, is that I can make more money but I cannot make more sanity. This is nothing profound or deep, this story happens again and again every single day. 

The deep and profound part is this. I write this as I sit at anchor about a mile off the Florida Keys, about 5 miles south of Key Largo by road. I am about an hours drive south of Miami Beach, Florida. I live in the Lower Midwest. I have been to Key Largo and Miami Beach just twice in my life. Once this week, and once during the long weekend I spent down here with my wife because we were married here. 

I am on a trip with my son. We are on a sailboat at sea for a week. It's a very peaceful and amazing experience. We have gone snorkeling and seen all the beauty that the reefs of the Florida Keys have to offer. We have see the sunset in the special way that only happens along the Keys, with brilliant shades of every color delighting the eyes as the sun sinks slowly into the Gulf of Mexico. We have see a galaxy of stars that you can only gaze upon at sea and miles away from a single man made light. It's a place of amazing beauty alone, but every since my navy days, the sea has always had a special place in my heart. This trip was set in motion 13 months ago and I am quite glad we did it. 

The divorce was set in motion almost a year ago today, this very day my divorce became final. There were so many twists and turns it made my head spin. There was game playing, postponing of hearings, hunting for phantom hidden accounts, a pointless arbitration, delay after delay after delay. This divorce should have been finalized a month after it began, and again every further month it dragged on. It was even postponed for a last few days to fall into the week I am on this trip in this place instead of the Friday before we left. 

All of this escaped me somehow. On this day the divorce was to be final. All my responsibilities had been taken care of prior to leaving. My blessed attorney handled the rest. I did not think we would have any communications this week and I was ok with that (prefer it even, smartphones tend to be a ball and chain). We happened to anchor at Key Largo this evening and I was able to check in with my jewel of an attorney just to hear that all had went well today. It surprisingly did, and thus the chapter was closed. 

There are mixed feelings of course. I'm glad it's over, but it should have never began in the first place. There was a profound emotional breakdown because of the trauma of the emotional damage, but from this breakdown I was reborn. There are thoughts of failure, of loss, of dreams that died, of mistakes made, of love misplaced and lost. When my reborn self has such dilemmas, I meditate. What better place to meditate while sitting on the bow of a sailing ship, anchored in a cove near Key Largo as the sun sets in it's most beautiful way?

Then it hits me. It hits me like a punch in the stomach. This beautiful sun I just watched set is the same sun that I and my new bride watched set from a dock not 5 miles from where I set anchored on the day after we were married, married on the same beach I had visited just a few days before. We were married on the sandy beach at Miami Beach. We then drove along the highway on the Keys specifically to see this sunset. It was a cherished memory, one of the rare ones from this tumultuous relationship. 

What does this mean? It is too much for me to contemplate at this moment. It is all too fresh, all too raw. The emotions are too confusing. How can this be? How can this fall together with such perfect timing from two different events with so many variables? How can this happen just so? I don't know, and I can hardly process it. 

I had a bit more time to reflect on this as the sky grew dim, and the stars began to glimmer. Perhaps this is my chance for a do over. Perhaps I can start again from the very place I went awry almost 6 years ago. Perhaps I can set this trauma aside. 

Early in the process, I decided to tie my wedding ring to a few balloons and set it to the winds. I watched it float away, not knowing where it would go, how far it would travel, or where it would come to rest. It was a typical windy spring Oklahoma day, so the possibilities are beyond comprehension. I thought it was quite poetic, and still do. What if I had kept the ring and cast it into the sea at the same sunset where this tragedy of errors had begun? I never could have dreamt I'd be in this place on this very day, but oh, what an opportunity missed.