60 days.

60 days. It has been 60 days. 60 days since I took the kids up the elevator to the 9^th floor of a giant office building and filed the divorce papers. 60 days. What a difference 60 days can make. I can print out the papers, sign and initial and make an appointment with the judge. Marriage over. Status: Divorced.

What do we do? I asked Jeff last night and he just kind of laughed. I am not entirely sure what that means. I think we can keep the papers filed for a year or two, until the judge finally decides to throw them out. I guess that is why they have a 60 day “cooling off period”. Apparently, the court system knows that there are no guarantees when you are dealing with life and love. 60 days.

I remember (haha, not that long ago) counting down the days and weeks until we could just get this whole thing over with. I wanted it to be finalized so badly so that we didn’t have to think about it anymore. I wanted to be done. I wanted to start healing my heart and begin to move forward. What a difference a 60 days can make.

Years ago I told Jeff that if we were ever to get a divorce, we would just end up getting married again anyway. Somehow that idea was always comforting to me; that is the way our relationship has always gone. Ups and downs, ebbs and flows…I always felt he had one foot out, yet his other foot was firmly planted within our love. It was confusing and hurtful. In the last couple months of therapy, I have come to accept that I too had one foot out. I was guarded and protective of my own heart. How could I demand someone to have both feet in when I was unable to do it myself? We are like two guarded little peas in a pod. A compartmentalized pod, mind you, so that we don’t get too close, of course.

A couple weeks before we made the commitment to reconcile, Jeff and I were sitting on the back patio after the kids went to bed and he says, “I never asked for a divorce.” Ahem, bull *cough*shit. He said that he asked for a separation and that I agreed to a divorce. This is not my recollection of that fateful evening…but, I am sure that both of our memories are colored and twisted with emotion. While sitting there that night, he said, “you know, you always said that if we were to get a divorce that we would just get married again. So, in that case, we could just call this a $750 mistake.” (We had a friend at the law firm get us a Friends & Family deal on the divorce cost)

As of right now, it’s a $300 mistake. We have only paid the filing fees. But, honestly, I don’t know if I would call it a mistake. Maybe we were in too deep. Had something not monumentally devastated our marriage, maybe we wouldn’t have been able to get ourselves to this point. Everything happens for a reason, right? We will keep the papers filed..let the clock run.  The practical part of me doesn’t want to pay $300 again if this whole thing blows up in my face. The other part of me wants to make some kind of ceremony out of burning the papers and smudging the house with sage to rid our lives of bad juju. There is no harm in some ritual smudging, right?…anyone have some extra sage I can borrow?

xoxo