As the clock ticks, the lingering change of my marital status is purely a matter of timing. It’s an arbitrary point, the passing of a calendar date, tied seemingly to a geographic location and its time zone too. At 12am PST tonight, as 2018 comes to a close, so legally does my marriage.But it’s been over for some time. We’ve been living separately for years, resigned to divorce for almost as many, entangled in the legal wrangling and processes related to a settlement agreement that’s been more pain than gain for either of us. Yet it is now all done, it has been officially final for a couple of weeks, concluding the ongoing debates and contention. The only sounds left has been an incessant rhythmic ticking accented by the occasional sigh, or the subtle sound of a dropping tear shed over the battles, angst, trauma, drama and scars left on both sides.
The year ahead scares the shit out of me. I feel venerable as hell with my job feeling somewhat precarious, my financial stability being on a thread, my emotional resolve being one of exhaustion, and a nagging uncertainty of what will be thrown at me next, by fate, that may completely derail my sincere need of time to stabilize.
Is it this place that makes me fall from you
Forget the words that once rang so true
Did we expect that life was ever fair, my god...
I sowed a field of rose and reaped a whipping rod
And everything I've held too tight inside
Could make a part of me die
And if my lips could only speak the name
The dam would break
What is this ice that gathers round my heart
To stop the flood of warmth before it even starts
It would make me blind to what I thought would always be
The only constant in the world for me
And every hours of every day
I need to fight from pulling away
And if my mind could only lose the chain
The dam would break
For all the things I hid away
And all the words I could not say
The dam would break
- Toad the Wet Sprocket