Crossposted from Facebook, fucking hell.
It’s funny, spending days and weeks feeling anxious about something, and then life smacks you hard with something that makes your previous anxieties seem tiny in comparison.
In nine days, I will finally be an official divorcée. I’m having mixed emotions, anxiety among them. But it’s mostly anxiety that I’ll choose one wrong word when answering the lawyer’s questions, and somehow we’ll need to draw this out even more. We began our uninterrupted Separation over five and a half years ago. I am so excited to be officially all the way single. I am so ready to take more space from someone who said some quite cruel things, but is finally returning my last few things. If hate was all he had in his heart for me, he could’ve lit them on fire at any time in the last five and a half years. I would cry, but I’m better at saying “it’s just stuff” than I was before having to throw out like 2/3 of my possessions, including photographs, film, and old sketchbooks I really wish I could’ve found a way to save.
Oh well. That was long in the past, too.
Anyway, so today there was a 15-acre wildfire 8.5 miles from my apartment building. The City of Berkeley sent a voice message, which my parents got three copies of, telling us to be ready to evacuate by 8pm. Pack a go bag.
We did. It was a tense afternoon, but I figured out that our city was literally just giving a days-in-advance heads up. Hours later, the fire appears to be fully contained and shrinking rapidly. Our go bags are fairly ready, mine is not yet in a backpack or suitcase and there’s a few other things to toss in. I’ll likely unpack it as soon as we get word that the fire is all the way out.
Anyway, I was not very functional while spending weeks worrying about slightly misspeaking at a Zoom call that starts in 9 days at Way Too Fucking Early my time, but I’ll get a very large hot cocoa and maybe a Mexican Coke to make sure I’m all the way awake and really focus on being concise in my chosen language- but I’m an avid reader and have had quite a few professional writers try very hard to metaphorically kick my ass into joining them. It is entirely useless anxiety.
In stark contrast, my parents and I were calm and disciplined as we discussed what could and would happen and planned our packing. Worrying endlessly about unlikely scenarios related to the justice system? Sure. Needing to face the possibility of an actual emergency? No fear at all, an adrenaline spike that felt rather similar to the blissful part of getting high on just the right amount of cannabis. There’s a task to do, pack a bag with what I need for three days for myself and my cat. Easy, almost fun.
Part of it is that I have almost no direct experience with the legal system, haven’t even done jury duty. Whereas I’ve traveled a very large amount, even considering my most recent 15ish years of being vastly underemployed and not able to afford the 3-4 trips a year I’d take when I was a full time corporate whore.
But after being sick with envy for those of you who did a no-fault divorce within days or weeks of separating, it’s finally my turn. I expect when it’s all done, I’ll shed a few tears. Tears of joy, loss, relief, loneliness? Yes. It’s okay, I’ll rewatch Inside Out 1 & 2 and be grateful, yet again, that I’m a Childfree Cat Lady, and the cat was adopted specifically as a companion for me. There was no question of who’d take him, and we haven’t fought about any possessions of dubious owner, not a single one. He accidentally took a purple and blue dice set I got for myself and left me with the dice set I’d gotten for him, green and gold to remind him of his beloved home country of Australia. When I pointed out that one tiny mistake, he had no problem switching dice sets in my first visit back to RI after the pandemic had subsided enough to feel safe traveling.
That was the last time I saw him in person, he begged off seeing me at my second visit a year later, and the third year, just this past early Summer did not work out either. That may be the last time I see him in person, and the zoom divorce hearing might be the last time I see him over video. I’m okay with that. Maybe it will help the stress dreams I still have featuring him finally vanish. My friends were right, though, they are absolutely lessening in both frequency and intensity. I wake up and thank God for my current life, small and silly as it is.
This text-wall really belongs in Livejournal, but I think it’s the sort of rumination that I’d like to see pop up every year.
And speaking of On This Day, I still haven’t posted a single picture from my latest RI visit. I will get around to it, hopefully before May 2025. At least one of my RI friends will probably ask if the many-months-late pics are of a current visit, and I’ll be touched all over again by how much they care about me. I need to get better at reaching out, as well as more serious about making friends here. When my income-stream increases, I can go out more than once in a blue moon. There are various circles I’m eager to join, and if that income-stream ever widens enough to afford a car, there’ll be no stopping me. Discord has been a blessing, though.
One last thing, when the imminent danger of the wildfire began to lose its teeth, I had some wonderful clarity similar to people who feel like they’ve just survived a brush with death. Most of it is to do with my very geeky LARPing hobby and spending a gifted 100 experience points on my three existing characters and allowing a fourth to finally leave the limbo she’s been in for, oh, seven years? Fuck that’s a lot. Amazing that I think I can still unlock her, most people would have given up and created something similar. How do I have so much faith in her and so little in myself?
That’s a pondering for another day. For now I am up way too early, written way too much, and am feeling more zest for life than I have in a long time.