Pulling the Plug on My Marriage

August 2002

The straw that broke the camel’s back in our marriage was something so seemingly minor, that even now I look back on it and think . . . “Really? There were much bigger events long before this that should have ended the union years before!” But everyone reaches their boiling point over different things at different times. Perhaps I was just a glutton for punishment. This seemingly minor incident involved a remark that my husband made about me to a friend of his. He told this friend that I was “the old ball and chain”. Someone else overheard this remark and reported it back to me; someone that I trust as a reliable source.

This “ball and chain” remark that I was labeled with made me absolutely livid! How dare he call me that when I was the one that paid the mortgage, kept the lights on and put food on the table while he indulged his hobbies during his regular winter unemployment from his seasonal job? WHO THE FUCK DID HE THINK HE WAS TO EXPLOIT ME LIKE THAT AND THEN HAVE THE NERVE TO CALL ME THE BALL AND CHAIN??????? I felt totally drained and had nothing left to give him. I was done; utterly, completely, totally done with this marriage.

Within one week in the middle of June 2002, I filed for divorce and put the house (which I had purchased prior to meeting my husband) on the market. I was finally, finally free of my tumultuous marriage and felt that I could now really get on with my life. Of course, he made many, many impassioned pleas to work things out and get back together, but I shut down every attempt he made at reconciliation. Never again would I give him another chance. Never.

January 2003

Within several weeks, my house was sold and and the deal closed at the end of August 2002. I found a lovely apartment for myself and my daughter nearby, and we started to lead very different lives than the ones we had led for the previous eight years. To celebrate this wonderful new beginning, we planned a cross-country road trip for 3 weeks in the summer of ’03. We planned to make stops in Lake Tahoe, Yosemite National Park, San Francisco, Monterey, Carmel, Los Angeles, Santa Monica, San Diego and Sedona, AZ. I used my tax return, some proceeds from the sale of my home, and savings from every paycheck to finance this once-in-a-lifetime trip with my daughter. Since there were no GPS’s at that time, we would have to rely on printouts from MapQuest to get us to our destinations. Just planning this girls’ trip was half the fun! What an adventure this was going to be.