The Myth of the "Amicable Divorce"

Amicable:

ADJECTIVE

1. (of relations between people) having a spirit of friendliness; without serious disagreement or rancor:

   "there will be an amicable settlement of the dispute"

   synonyms: friendly · good-natured · cordial · easy · easygoing
   
   

   Let me be clear here . . .there is NO SUCH THING AS AN AMICABLE DIVORCE!  You can not be "friendly, good-natured, or easy going" when you're going through the most painful thing a couple can go through.  Now, don't get me wrong, you CAN exhibit these behaviors.  You CAN show each other kindness and not scream at each other.  You can not blame each other for the broken state of your marriage, but underneath it all, you ARE crumbling.  You're destroyed.  Even if you saw it coming.  I ask you, if you SEE that bus that's coming down the road to hit you, does it not still flatten your ass once it strikes you?  Yeah, I thought so.  

   Being aware that you're going to be "flattened" does NOTHING to prevent the pain. . .the "shock and awe" that comes with filing some stupid paperwork.  One wouldn't expect such a "mundane sounding" event to create such chaos in one's life, yet it does.  It's beyond chaos.  Beyond pain.  No, this. . .THIS is something entirely different that I don't think there's a word for yet.  Total destruction, doesn't even do it justice.  

   My husband and I are "amicable".  I hate that fucking word.  Yet, we are; on the surface, quite amicable.  We've been amicable our entire marriage.  Not fighting.  Not even once, in twenty years of being together.  Yeah, I know, I know. . .you think I'm totally bullshitting you, yet, I'm not!  We "polited" ourselves straight into divorce.  We never once raised our voices.  We never once spoke out of turn to each other.  Yet, here we are.  The "amicable" divorce.  

   People "praise us" for how well we're handling it all.  Let me also be clear here. . . .I'M NOT HANDLING THIS WELL AT ALL!!!  I'm falling apart.  I'm lonely.  I'm heart broken.  I'm angry.  I'm FAR from friendly, good-natured, cordial or easy going!  Most especially to myself.  I'm beating the ever loving SHIT out of myself.  Questioning all of the things I didn't do.  Why DIDN'T I?  Torturing myself for all of things I DID do, just incorrectly.  Why didn't I do that better?  What's wrong with me?  No. . .there's nothing amicable about how I feel.  So, when people tell me how "well we're handling all this", I can't tell if I want to laugh or cry more.  If I'm "proud of us" or if I think we're just fooling ourselves and everyone else, too. 

   
   

   As much as I WISH there really was an "amicable divorce" I KNOW that there's not.  There cannot be.  No matter how much you KNOW you don't belong together or you're better off apart or you didn't mesh or you didn't have anything in common or you "lost that loving feeling" a long time ago, it's just not amicable.  How could it be?  You're ending something.  You're killing something.  "It', the marriage is an entity, in and of itself.  It was this living, breathing thing that you had around you every single day.  It might not seem that way, especially at "the end", but let me tell you it's there.  It's alive.  That is, until you kill it.  Until you smother the life right out of it. . .it's alive.  It exists.  It's real.  It matters.  The pain involved in the "death of what could of been" is so immense, it drowns you.  It's the huge waves that pound you down and the undertow that pulls you under until your lungs fill with burning salt water and you gasp and you struggle and you fight and you try to swim to the surface, yet the surface never comes.  Somehow you just get pulled deeper and deeper and it becomes darker and darker and then. . . .POOF. . . .it's just done.  Dead and gone.  Just like that.  With the ink of a pen.  What's amicable in THAT?   What's "friendly" or "easy going" there?  

   
   

   I will survive.  I will, somehow, get "washed up on the shore" on some strange island where, I'll live alone.  Well, not "alone alone", I'll have my wonderful children to look after.  Those two amazing human beings that we created on "our island". . .the island of our marriage.  These two people who also got dragged down and spit out onto a new land mass.  The two people whom carry my heart with them, as they travel around this big new place, called "divorce land".  They will give me the strength to pull myself up and brush off the sand and salt and untangle the sea weed that's wrapped around my neck.  I will see in them the love and support that I've given to them, so freely over the years, paid back to me in my moment of desperation and need.  I will return the favor, freely, in the hopes that they won't hate either one of us for making this "one decision" that forever changed the course of all of our lives.  You know the one. . . .that "amicable divorce". . . . . .

   Take a deep breath, it's just another day in "Perfect". . . . .