Was helping Good Christian Man Friend pack -- he's relocating to be near his fiancee -- and we were chit-chatting and chat-chitting and he asked about the World o' Walkaways and what did I miss most about being married to STBX?
And I puzzled three hours 'til my puzzler was sore.
For the life of me, I couldn't remember. Not only could I not remember what I miss about being married to STBX -- not as a "real" memory, that is, as a sensory memory as opposed to a kind of intellectual abstraction -- I couldn't remember what it felt like to be married to STBX. "When was the last time you knew it was good?" asked GCMF.
And even with the blows of Mjolnir upside my rusty brain pan, I couldn't generate so much as a twinge of a ghost of a hint of a recollection of a shadow of a time when I affirmatively felt warmly towards her. I know I did. At least, I think I did. But I couldn't access it. It was like reading history -- you can know what happened to some historical figure, but you can't know it. You know?
1987 we met. Apart now 18 months. And the shadow of those 18 months is so long and so deep that it has snuffed out the dimly flickering candlelight of remembrance. And in a weird way, I sort of mourn the loss of remembrance more than I mourn the loss of STBX. It's as if the totality of divorce is so...well, total...that it takes away even the fleeting pleasure of Remember When.
