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If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace. ~ Thomas Paine
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I've been thinking a lot lately about the butterfly effect. The itty bitty things that happen to us, producing gigantic outcomes. When I was getting married the first time, we had to attend pre-marital counseling sessions, as ordered by the Catholic church. I think there were four two hour sessions, 30 young engaged couples sitting on folding chairs in a large room just trying to get through this so they could get on to more important things, like what color foil embossing should be chosen to best offest those personalized cocktail napkins.
On the last night the only thing on my mind was crossing this obligatory task off of my massive pre-wedding to-do list. Then we had the quiz. It was a simple thing. Sit where your partner can't see, and answer these simple questions. I don't remember them all, but they were basic; How many children would you like to have, what is your fiance's favorite color, TV show, food? And the kicker: What is your fiance's worst trait? I breezed through the quiz until I got to that one. Not because it was difficult to come up with anything negative about this man I loved enough to consider spending the rest of my life with, but because I couldn't decide between the two worst things. Hmmm. Kinda makes you think.
Then, we revealed our answers to eachother. Woah. Not only was he completely off base on just about everything about me, but my worst trait? I was annoying. Annoying! When I questioned him on that, he shrugged and said it was either that, or my family, and he thought I would get mad if he said that my family was my worst trait, so he settled. Chuh!!
That was it for me. I was calling off the wedding. It was almost funny, this silly little class that I hadn't taken seriously at all had done it's job. I felt this odd sense of calm come over me. A little bit of sadness, a whole lot of fear, but still an undertow of tranquility that told me I was going to do the right thing. I would wait until after the class, go back to his apartment and deliver the news that was sure to devastate him. That's right Honey, your annoying fiance with the difficult family is setting you free.
Then it happened. We had run into another couple that we happened to go to high school with at this class. They were more his friends than mine, but I recognized them and they were nice. They were planning a wedding too, obviously. Imagine that. Small world. On that last night, they invited us out for a drink after class, and before I could open my mouth, my soon-to-be-ex fiance accepted for us. So we went. I figured, ah, what's another day of being engaged, in the grand scheme of things? I'll just call off the wedding tomorrow. Sleep on it, I told myself. So practical.
Except that I had a really good time that night. Not because I drank excessively or anything like that, but just because going out with another couple and catching up about high school and life and whatever just made me re-think my decision. I can't exactly explain what came over me, but I didn't call off the wedding. I got married. We even attended the wedding of the couple who saved us as a married couple. Less than a year later, I was divorced. I'm 100% certain that had we not run into them that night, I would have gone through with my plan to call it off.
The divorce actually came to me in another "Aha!" moment. I was working at a job with a bunch of young people who attended happy hour every Friday night. I never joined them, because my husband frowned on that sort of thing. Finally one week a coworker who had been nagging me to come out with them told me to invite him along. So I did, and he said no, so I told him I was going without him. And I did. That night, I did drink heavily. I was talking to a boy named Skip who worked in my office. At some point in our conversation, I started to say that I was thinking of divorcing my husband, but I stopped myself in a panic. He heard enough, and encouraged me to say what I was going to say, but I couldn't. I didn't. I went home later and when I woke up the next morning I found that someone had been rummaging through my drawers. My personal papers. My checkbook. My email. When you're a bit of a neat freak you notice things like this. There was nothing incriminating to find, but still, it was such a violation. I called him at work and told him off. He came home immediately, all apologetic and fearful. I left, drove around for a while, then went to my brother's house and told him I was getting divorced. His response? "Thank God!" I slept on my brother's couch that night, and my husband never even called to see where I was.
I was sad, not becuse I was going to miss him, but because I had been stupid enough to marry him in the first place. I felt like I had sacrificed my life to make him happy. I was young, but I felt old, and the stigma of being "divorced" forever more, not "single" but "divorced", as if they're not the same thing, really stung.
Then, on Monday, I ran into Skip at the network printer. He was printing something big and my job was behind his, so we stood there, waiting, and he said "I think I know what you were going to say Friday night, and if I'm right, I'd just like you to know that I would be honored if you would consider me a potential candidate for dinner and drinks some night." And he walked away, and just like that, I knew I was going to be ok. For the first time in well over a year, I was happy. I was young and free and had the world at my feet and though I never took him up on his offer, I wish I could let him know how much those words meant to me at the time. Isn't it funny, how something so small can have such a big impact on someone's life?
Whew, I got lost in that story, sorry. It just makes me think about how it all works. How I can't have regrets, because if everything hadn't gone exactly as it had, I wouldn't be exactly where I am today. Maybe if I hadn't married him, I would have found some other less offensive guy and married him and had some kids and this whole different life. And he wouldn't be Ryan, and THAT would be a tragedy, because if there's anyone on this earth who's perfect for me, and a perfect father for perfect little Hope, it's him. It's hard to even fathom that Hope could have someone else's chromosome, and just like that, she wouldn't be who she is. It boggles the mind.
Just now I asked Ryan what he thinks my worst trait is, and without even looking up or pausing to think, he said "Can I pick two?" and I gasped and agreed, and he said "Your lead foot, and your propensity towards driving while angry." And see? You can't even compare them, because if my worst trait is not something that annoys him, but something that makes him worry about me, you just know that it's right, no matter how many times I got it wrong before.
posted by: AmericanGirl at 12:32 |
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