This coming Friday is the 14th, which would have been my fourth wedding anniversary.

So it is with no small degree of celestial irony that today's mail included the notice of final dissolution of that marriage.

So.

Time for a beer.

So far, the absolute worst thing about becoming divorced is, for me, boredom. I mean, what the fuck did I do before this?

It must have been something.

Events of last night have made me realize that I hate chewing gum. It seems stupid - that I would just realize something like that - and ultimately trivial - but lately I have started thinking a great deal about the things that I actually like and dislike (as opposed to what are habitual or expected by society).

Last night we were eating at Tower Burger and someone had placed a wad of gum under the table. Of course, it got ground into my pants - a rather nice pair of brown denim that I like a lot. This caused a click in my skull, and I realized that I have never liked gum: I always thought it was disgusting and a pointless exercise for jaw muscles. Popping, snapping, blowing bubbles - so classless.

I'd chew gum as a kid. But thinking about it now, I never really liked doing so; it was something everyone else did and liked doing, so obviously I should as well. And yeah: sugar. But really, once the taste was gone, chewing was as enjoyable to me as mowing the lawn.

I expect that blowing bubbles out of a couple chunks of Hubba Bubba was a fun for some people, but the times that it popped and got stuck to my face (ick) placed a damper over any long-term enjoyment.

In other news, I have been irrationally (or perhaps, rationally) angry the past two days or so. It has been a long time since I've simmered like this. While I was a rage-fueled curmudgeon not even ten years ago, time has cooled those fires and for the most part I have felt happy and composed for the better part of a decade.

Anger is something that has been very rare; I may get irritated at something but that quickly passes. I rant a lot, but not because I'm angry (or even because I'm irritated), but because a rant in passing about someone's ill-informed choices in parking (or chewing gum) is funnier than a comment about how wonderful I think the yellow sunlight reflects off a tree. There is easy humor in negativity; not so much in joy (though not much to be found in my chewing gum rant).

The fact of the matter is that, inside, I take far, far more joy out of the world than I let on. I just don't express it. This is because of perception - I am not happy chatty-cathy and I expect I would irritate everyone around me if I expressed every positive emotion I felt. Many times, my vocabulary doesn't seem fit for the task of describing the things I observe.

And also, most importantly, I think, I don't mention these feelings and observations because they are mine. Private joys. It is arguable that they would lose value were they to be shared, but it feels, sometimes, that the act of describing them somehow sullies the experience - solidifies it; catalogs it.

Every day, I wake up early, hoping that it is sunny outside. I get up early because the sun moves across my deck between eight a.m. and noon. It is, perhaps, my greatest joy to sit outside in the sun and work. I sit facing outward, so that I can see the azure sky, and the golden-green trees, and the light embellishing the adobe-orange exterior of my building. I have ended up tanning to a leathery brown because of this.

But lately it's been foggy and rainy in the morning. I am frustrated that I cannot sit in the sun in the mornings.

I am frustrated that the apartment is slowly filling up with half-packed boxes and symbols of my wife's impending move to her apartment. Mattresses. Television sets. Microwaves. Lamps.

I am frustrated that I cannot seem to focus on work at all. I have a lot to do - stuff I'm getting paid for. Even if I can manage to focus on it, there are roadblocks. And that's frustrating.

I take a great deal of joy out of learning and playing the guitar. But, this, too, is frustrating much of the time: I am an old dog, and this is a new trick. The bones in my hands have had twenty years to ossify so teaching them to stretch through movable-form panatonic scales is a difficult and painful process.

I am a couple months behind in updating Nexus War. There was an update that I had to rollback because it contained a horrible, database-destroying bug. It took two months of active testing to locate it and quash it. I've been losing players constantly because I couldn't solve this thing - and now that it is solved, other elements are preventing the build from going live. The reactions from the playerbase are frustrating, but no where near as frustrating as the punishment I'm putting myself through about it.

I know that in two week's time, she will be gone, and I my cat, Simon, will be alone in the house. And I know that he will be okay for a day or two, and then start to warble and get anxious because neither she nor Mosfet (the other cat) are here. He'll be confused - it's happened before, when she took trips to see her mother. And it will be frustrating because I won't be able to communicate to him that she's gone and not coming back.

I am working on a new game, and it is a lot of fun to do. I take a lot of joy and pride in writing things correctly and, after Nexus War, I know a lot better how to do things the right way. But it's very slow going, and the process of content creation is going to be a hellish chore. The fact that I cannot simply pour my mind onto a disk and be done with it is intensely frustrating.

In two week's time, I will go to bed alone and wake up alone. I will eat dinner alone, and I will watch television alone, and I will play Geometry Wars alone. The silence in the house will be the loudest thing I can imagine. That is when the real pain will begin. And I think this is where the anger comes from: I am angry that I will have to endure this. I am angry about a lot of things, but mostly I'm angry because I'm afraid and I'm not used to that.

I'm thirty-five years old.

Dear God, what am I going to do?

Getting married in California is like this:

1) Go to the courthouse.
2) Wait in line for 20 minutes.
3) Fill out a small form (about 10 fields)
4) Get someone to say "you're married"
5) Get two people to sign the form you filled out.
5) Mail it in.

Total time elapsed: about four hours.

Getting divorced in California, even if you have no kids or shared property and are not fighting over anything:

1) Fill out a big-ass form.
2) Mail it in.
3) Wait six months and 1 day.
4) Fill out another form.
5) Mail that in.
6) Wait for the court.

Total time elapsed: at least 6 months, 1 day, and about 5 hours.

Between steps 2 and 3, you are technically still married. However, you're not "legally" together with regards to property and income - I could win the lottery the day after the form was mailed in and gnat23 would have no claim to it.

We saw a lawyer the other night, just to make sure we understood the weird legal issues involved. I remember staring at a wall of law books, thinking that it takes thousands upon thousands of pages to codify the concept of "Doing the Right Thing", and how ultimately sad that actually was.

But not everyone has the Wisdom of Solomon, and not everyone is honest.

I have been almost studiously avoiding discussion about the Elephant In The Room. I'm not entirely sure why this is so. I don't feel that subject is entirely "my own" - gnat23 is just as much a part of this as I. Further, despite many offers of people to serve as "an ear", I don't feel a desire to accept the offers. This has nothing to do with those people; I am just. . .very guarded. Interestingly enough, writing here, publically, overcomes that.

I. . . do not have many close friends. And I do not have a desire to be "one of those people" who has nothing but bad days and bitches about them constantly.

So.

Yesterday we cleaned the apartment. Nothing major; just vacuuming and tidying. During this process, two things happened that affected me greatly:

1) I found a ticket stub from when we went to the zoo the other week.
2) She found a set of little plastic Doctor Who toys (a TARDIS and a Dalek) that we were planning to make into Christmas ornaments.

I almost threw the ticket away. Reflex. But suddenly, I stopped, and thought to myself, "This will have been the last time we went to the zoo together." So I put it in a drawer for safe keeping.

We did the same for the Doctor Who figures.

This started a chain of thought, one that, more than anything else, shot through me - a rocket propelled weapon with barbed hooks that tore through my soul.

The thought was this:

Soon - not this week, not next month, probably not even in a year - but soon - soon, our marriage will be nothing more than a stack of momentos and photographs sitting in a small memory box, hidden away in a drawer.

In a few years, she will have a new boyfriend or someone special. And one day, he will go through a photo album, and see pictures of me, and ask, "who is that?" and she will respond, "oh, that's just my ex-husband."

I don't want to be put into a drawer.

I don't want to be "just" an ex-husband.

And yet, that is what is going to happen. It would be foolish to think otherwise.

There are good days and bad days. Mostly, they are good: this is an accepted thing. But also, there are bad: the process is akin to being told that, within the month, surgeons are going to have to amputate your leg. At first, there is fear, and denial, and anger - but eventually you accept the inevitability of life.

But that leg. . .it's still coming off. And that, frankly, sucks.

For years, I'd read books or seen movies or what have you where a person does the Right Thing for the sake of someone he loves, even though it hurt like hell. I understood this intellectually but never emotionally. I had no idea how hard it would be to do.

I've always Done the Right Thing. The men I respected growing up Did the Right Thing. I learned from them. But the Right Thing is almost always the Hard, Painful Thing.

I've never doubted that I had the strength to Do the Right Thing. I have always had an inner core of deep steel, and I have never doubted it. Until now.

I'm scared of breaking. Of not being strong enough to support her through this: she's very scared. Of not being able to Do the Right Thing.

Of being put into a drawer, hidden away.

The sad truth of the matter is that she no longer wishes to be married. It is not a case of her not wishing to be married to me (or so I'm told, though this may be a kind fiction); rather, she wishes independence. To be alone. While we have had our problems, they are, in many ways, a symptom of this underlying craving within. I have not been a bad husband. Quite the opposite: I've been a very good husband. Just not the right husband, I suppose.

I once told someone that fear and hope were two sides of the same coin. Both are, at their root, anticipation - though one is a negative and the other positive. My advice was, "Instead of being afraid that something bad will happen, hope that something good will happen."

I am having difficulty applying this to my own life. Perhaps I am too much of a cynic. It doesn't matter.

I have hope for her. I hope that she finds what she wants, and that she is happy. This is clean and easy; I love her more than life itself and want only the best for her. Even though it is not what I want, I hope only good things for her.

For myself, however, there is only fear. I have nothing specific that I am afraid of; merely a vague notion that I have nothing to hope for with regards to myself. Fear fills the void, a vagueness.

I don't know what to do. There isn't a manual for this, for knowing that one day, the most important parts of you will be fragmented memories and photographs that only surface during apartment cleanings every other year or so.

And I feel so very selfish because of this fear.

I feel totally, utterly flayed. Ripped open, with my organs and muscles exposed and drying in the air. I have moments of vacillation where things are okay, and then moments of being shattered, when it is difficult to breathe.

This sucks. This is not who I am. I am . . . not used to grieving for myself. Once I was. no longer. I grieve for other people sometimes. But not for me. And I forgot that it sucks.

The entire emotional process is already tedious. And it's only begun.

A snippet from last night, which made me laugh, but wasn't appropriate to post earlier:

jorm: there's no real villain here.

jorm: it just. . .is. which is weirdly all the more tragic.

majcher: you could probably find some way to blame the bush administration.

jorm: that's a good idea.

majcher: that might help. a clear villain always does.

majcher: makes it easier to stay up late, plotting revenge.

Six years ago today, I was on irc and involved in several conversations at once. I made a comment about how I wanted to see this new Steven Spielberg film, AI. My enthusiasm for the film was met with a resounding "meh" by the bulk of the channel, so I kind of wrote it off as another "oh well."

But about ten minutes later I got a private message from gnat23: "Do you want to go see AI on Friday with me?"

My reply: "Sure."

Her response: "Dinner/Movie/Sex?"

My reply: "Uh... sure."

You know. Just in case there was any doubt as to her intentions. She asked me out. We had been orbiting each other for a couple weeks, actually, so it was inevitable.

The 28th will be the 6 year anniversary of our first date. She showed up in a smoking hot red dress, and we went to eat at Rocco's. I was totally broke, having been laid off recently, but I bought the dinner anyway. After dinner, we walked down to the Metreon. We were late and had to sit right in the center of the very front row.

She bought the movie tickets.

We went back to my apartment and didn't leave for three days. I trusted her with my car the next week when I flew back home to West Virginia. A month after our first date, we spent the weekend in Napa, doing a hot balloon ride.

Three months after our first date, I flew with her to Wisconsin and met her family. I went camping with her father and step-mother and had a wonderful time. Her dad liked me almost instantly; her mother didn't (still doesn't).

Six months after our first date, we flew to Duluth and she met my family. This was an excellent time. My father's words: "Gnat's neat."

Eight months after our first date, she moved in with me. The apartment was too small - a shithole in SOMA that was excellent for one person but microscopic for two. She had been laid off from her job and we decided to save money.

Twenty months after our first date, I asked her to marry me. I did it in a Thai restaurant. I had asked every one I trusted whether they thought it was a good idea. My father's words: "it's more important to like someone than to love them when it comes to marriage."

She said "yes."

Thirty-nine months ago we decided to ditch our wedding plans entirely and just, you know, "get married." So we did: 2.5 days from decision to rings. It was one of the smartest things we did and totally low-stress. My father's words: "Good man. Smart."

Twenty-six months ago we decided to "move on up." We got a really nice apartment in Miraloma Park/Diamond Heights, and had a grand old time picking the paint colors and buying furniture. We had our problems - all married couples do - but we were happy. My father's words: "Excellent. Sounds like you've become an adult."

Fourteen months ago I was laid off from Elemental Security. We took it in stride, and I got work contracting. I launched my first game. She was intensely supportive. My father's words: "Fuck 'em."

Ten months ago I quit contracting to work on game development full time. Again, she was super supportive. My father's words: "Just make sure you can handle it."

Three months ago, she managed to snag a job that she'd been eyeing for over a year. We had a long period of adjustment - new schedule, different work style, and there was drama. My father's words: "Gnat's awesome. They promoted her again yet?"

Seven days ago we started an aquarium of triops. Every morning we wake up and watch how much they've grown in the past eight hours (and it's a lot). (My father has no opinion about triops.)

Two days ago we went to the zoo. It was a gorgeous day - upper seventies. We saw tigers! I love tigers. We saw bears, and we saw insects, and just about everything else. Then we went down to the ocean and she stepped in the Pacific Ocean, which, oddly, she had never done before. My father's words: "Son, it's probably 90 degrees out here."

Six years. There is a dreadful symmetry in the number six. Three times two. Two halves of three; the product of two prime numbers. These six years have been the longest "chapter" in my life, to be honest. I've honestly never been more assured of myself, and who I am.

So it is strangely apt that four hours ago we agreed to divorce one another and end our marriage.

This is an amicable split. While she is my best friend in the universe, ultimately we do not belong together. There are differences between us - core, steel-level differences - which we cannot communicate past. Thus, it is time to end things.

We tried to hold it together for a couple months, trying everything. Several counseling sessions.

There is no villain here. We are just puzzle pieces that no longer click. We've already figured out who gets what. Who absorbs which debt. Who pays for what bills. So all that really remains is to sign papers, find her an apartment (I will be keeping the current one), and furnish it.

My father's words: "Keep your wits about you. Don't get dragged down into some hell hole of despair."

I'm gonna try, dad.