I got divorced in March 2017. Or, well, rather, we decided to divorce in that month, and then we lived together for like 29 days of it. The arc of how that happened is detailed here.
I didn’t want to stay in the apartment we shared, but I also didn’t want to move really far away or anything. I had a few dog walks in this period where I contemplated going somewhere else, doing something else — I had Chicago, Denver, Charlotte, and DC on the list — but nothing made sense financially and in places where I did have friends, they all had kids, and I felt I would have been this weird uncle-type figure to said children, so … ultimately I decided to stay put.
I figured familiarity would be good, so I decided to get another unit in my complex, which is two buildings on either side of a street kinda near TCU. I went to the leasing office and, ironically, on the same exact moment I was in there, another divorced dude was looking to make the same move.
I got this new unit, but it wasn’t available until mid-May. This was late March. So basically for that April, I threw a bunch of comforters on the floor and my dog slept there, I slept in the bed, I got some work done, I was depressed a good deal of the time, and I went out probably 25 of 30 nights.
Around May I started getting my shit together to move, and set it for May 16. I graduated from college on May 17, but in 2003 — so it would be the day before my 14th anniversary of graduating. Wrote a little bit about that here.
Now, I had some stuff — I would estimate that my ex had taken 75% of our stuff, honestly — and I was just moving across the street, but I did have bigger items like bed, couch, what have you.
So on May 16, these dudes get to my old apartment, and we set up what needs to happen and where the new apartment is, and they were like “OK, give us about three hours.”
I had already put this out of office up for my freelance clients, which admittedly at the time were not many, so I didn’t really have work stuff to chase down.
So, I went to this bar across the street at about 11:30, as the guys were starting. I just sat there drinking and eating for three hours, flipping through my phone, texting people, many of whom didn’t respond, just sitting there sad and thinking about my life.
It was a really weird moment and I bring it up now because I think about this stuff in hindsight a lot — like, when you text someone or email with someone, do you really know the situation they’re in during that moment? Maybe they’re corraling kids. Maybe they’re having sex. Maybe their boss is reaming them out.
We really have no idea.
I just sat there and made SMS small talk with the small percentage of people who were responding in that moment, and I kept thinking to myself, “This is such a weird, painful day for me and no one really has any idea, beyond the broader picture of ‘I think he just got divorced.'”
It was just weird. Sometimes when I go back to that bar, and I sit in that same seat, and I look out at the complexes, I think to myself: Jeez, how fucking sad was that day?
And how little do we know about the state of the people we’re communicating with, work and personal contexts?
I think we need to try harder to meet people where they’re at, and even before that, to discover where they’re at.
Does that sound right?
