12,004 days

I got an e-mail this morning from my attorney’s paralegal. Attached was a scanned copy of the Separation Decree, signed and dated by the Court. As of last Saturday, the State officially recognizes our separation. From that day, counting backwards to the wedding, was twelve thousand and four days exactly.

What a funny number … so close to something so round. Let’s see … that’s 1714 weeks and six days. (That’s right, we were married on a Sunday. I’d forgotten.) It’s a little over 394 months. Or it’s just seven weeks exactly shy of thirty-three years.

Thirty-three years. Starting back when I was twenty-two. (See if you can figure out how old I am now!) People told us we were too young to get married. Even my parents told us that, though they were 25 and 21 when they tied the knot. I was the first of my college friends to get married, as Wife was the first of hers. 

What in God’s name were we thinking?

Of course I’ve long said that without the marriage I would never have gotten any older. Without it I would have stayed the same immature prat I was back then. Is that true? Who knows? Maybe there would have been something else that would have grown me up. There’s never any way to tell this kind of thing.

As I’ve been typing this, I’ve been thinking about my life in eleven-year blocks … all because of the conjunction of 33 and 22 a couple paragraphs ago.

When I was 11, my family moved back to the USA from living abroad.
When I was 22, I married Wife.
When I was 33, we bought a house and (a few months later) I got my first managerial job.
When I was 44, Wife started her affair with Boyfriend 4. A few months later was the night she was arrested. A few months after that, Boyfriend 4 came to live with us. Son 1 was nine years old at that point. Son 2 was seven.
When I was 55, … well, that’s today. The separation is signed and filed.

It’s been four years since I moved out of the house – almost five years since I told Wife I wanted a divorce. Eight years since I decided it for myself, and made her agree to separate our money.

Nine and a half years since I started this blog.

Big milestone.
__________

I learned some years ago not to make major decisions for a while after having to make one big emotional decision. Well I didn’t have to make any decisions today (big or small), and this is a day I’ve been awaiting for a long time. It should be no big deal, and in some ways it’s not.

But I still better not make any big decisions for the rest of the day.

Hope you all are doing well.