Skipping class

A few months after I moved here I started attending a fairly large church. I liked it; big enough that I was invisible and the pastors were so good and their sermons so interesting that I kept going back week after week. I was searching for guidance, for a confidant, someone that could understand my pain.

I noticed one Sunday morning that the church was going to start up another round of their Divorce Care classes. Perfect I thought! Getting rid of him and those horrible homicidal thoughts by just attending a class a few hours a week. I'll do it.

At the tender age of 26, I was the YOUNGEST person in the class. Most had been married for 15, 20, some even 30 years. My five years paled in comparison. Most everyone else had kids. I had no one. But I was lonely, confused and just wanted to be with other people that would understand what I was going through. So I showed up for the second class, and the third, and the fourth..

Around week 6 or so, one of the co-leaders suggested that it was time we start getting to know each other outside of class. Our assignment was to call one person sometime that week to talk. She assigned numbers and we were paired up. In hindsight, this is a stupid idea. Wouldn't it have been better to pair people up based on similarities? Yeah I thought so too.

My first week I was paired up with an older lady, married close to 40 years to an abusive and cheating man. I was reluctant to call but at least we had the cheating thing in common.

The next week we were paired up with different people. Out of all the women in the class I avoided Elaine like the plague. She made it a point to tell all of us that she was not in the class to work through her feelings for her first marriage but rather the affair she had with a man while she was married. (Seems that her lover took off with another and she didn't know quite how to deal.) Another night she shared with us how she had thrown a butcher knife at him and subsequently stabbed him with a fork. .

Guess whom I was paired up with that week?

Guess whom I never called?

I quit going a few classes after that. Try as I might I could never figure out where I belonged.

But to this day every so often I run into Deborah, a beautiful, fit, wonderful 50+ realtor and spinning instructor. She, like myself, had only been married a few years. Neither of us had stabbed someone with a fork. And both of us were in the class to heal from our divorces, not our affairs. It was awkward the first few times we ran into each other b/c there always seemed to be this need to talk about everything, fill each other in on our life and grieving. How were we doing? The divorce? Are you dating? Etc etc.

But now, its more of a friendly "hi, how's it going?" conversation. Gone are the days of grabbing each other’s hand, pulling the other in and hugging each other as if it was life saver. "How you doing" was murmured between our sobs and talking about our divorces. I understand it was what we needed at the time Five years ago I never thought I'd get to that point; a point where I didn't need to talk about the divorce. Where I wouldn't constantly questioned my future, or where I belonged, or continually question why he would sleep with his best friend's wife while still married to me. Would that empty nagging pain ever leave?

This morning I was over at my dad's looking at pictures. I ran across some from my brother's college graduation in '95. Amongst the stacks was one of the ex, my mom, and myself. It caught me off guard and I sat staring at the picture, at him, his smile, our innocence, trying as I might to remember us, him, back then.

Happily I shoved the picture aside