Dating when you're 39

Random Dude: You know, I saw your TEDx video and used it as part of my research.

Me: Awww Thanks! It was definitely...

RD: You were big in that video. You certainly have lost weight since then. 

Me: 

Random Clueless Dude: You know that us, white people and Indians are both caucasians right? 

Me: Ah...I don't know about that. 

RCD: Because Aryans. 

Me: I'm Dravidian though. From the south. 

RCD: We're the same. Trust me. 

Random Pervy Dude: I hope you don't get mad at me but that young lady in the boots in your picture - Is she single? And do you mind passing along this picture to her?

<Insert dick pic>

Random Asian Dude: Trump is despicable but I still voted for him because identity politics and BLM 

Me: You brought about Trump because you didn't like that people wanted others to recognize them and weren't going to take shit lying down. 

RAD: Yes. 

Me: And all this horrible, terrible, no-good disaster that is present day America - it's good with you?

RAD: Worth it.

Random Argentinian dude: <vast amounts of unseemly gifs>

All the Random Indian dudes: 

RID: How about a second date?

Me: I don't think there's much of a connection 

RID: I was just thinking the same thing. And also, some free advice for the next time you get a good guy interested in you. 

<Insert tons of advice on how I can be less me and more an amenable version>

A Lifetime later

It's been four years since the boy and I stopped being an 'us'. 

And there has not been a single moment where I have regretted walking away.

Divorce is such a mixed bag of cliches.

It's liberating, it's life altering, it opens up a world of possibilities, it's emotionally perplexing, and it's one of the most public admittance of failure there is.  

To say that the boy turned out not-quite-to-be who I thought he was Or that the person I was with him was an imposter is an understatement.

Over the years, I have experienced so many moments that made me realize that the things I used to dream of and the possibilities that I thought should exist does. 

And every moment puts into sharp relief that I had sort of sold myself short with the boy. 

Not just that he wasn't the person I wanted in my life but that I hadn't expected more for and of myself. And that I had unwittingly roped another person into a life neither of us wanted. 

I am eternally grateful to have left.

I am happy. And I have been happy for sometime now. 

And I wanted the interwebs to know that I was. 

Today, in response to an email I had sent a couple of weeks ago regarding our divorce, the boy sent me this:
I wanna say that there are two regrets in my life - 1) cheating on you and 2) raising my hand on you. I have enjoyed my life with you and had the best time. I don't regret fighting the world for you... and wish you all the very best. 
Nothing will give me more pleasure than if I can help you if you EVER need anything. 

I was at a charming southern restaurant when I read the email and had to rush to the loo to give in to my tears.
And then I was fine.
Some resentful baggage was dumped when he acknowledged the wrongdoings.

For a long while, I had numbed myself with food/kdrama/activities to the point of oblivion in that marriage. And for the first time in a long while, it felt that I had mattered to him, that I had existed in that relationship. My ego has been smoothed. A minute part of me also did the whole 'Why couldn't you just be this human before?'

When I returned home, I looked through my divorce folder. Going over the multitude of tasks I had to tick off and get done to arrive at where I am, I know that, as usual, this email is just lip service.

His words (mangled and tortured as they always are) were and are so cheap. In the two months since he hit me, he

• went missing from the house for days, while I shopped for a lawyer and helped my sister close her life in the former place,
• kept stalling when I wanted to sit down and talk assets, 
• offered, then redacted, to help my sister move, when I arranged for movers and packed away our life, 
• refused to split the lawyer's fees or even hire a lawyer, 
• made me book him a hotel when he finally agreed to drive the moving truck to the new place. 
• refused to hand over information of our funds to me, while I called/texted/emailed constantly for three weeks, 
• stalled on letting me know about the credit card debt, which I finally got a handle on after a month of calls to various credit card companies and him, 
• fought over trifling matters, while I walked away to ease the process, 
• took 3 years to close out our dealings. 

The boy once told me that he looked at life as a river and that he just floated along wherever it took him. 

I can't think of a more appropriate epitaph for our relationship than that:
Here lies a marriage. He floated along

Edited to add: And she walked away. 

I knew I was compromising for a long time but I thought that was what marriages were about - compromise and hard work. The daily indignities, the frustrations over being passed over, the resentment, etc, etc - I thought they were part and parcel of married life.
AND
This is such a big AND...
I didn't trust that I had it in me to hack it alone.
Here I was a strong woman with a job and a feminist to boot and middlingly overwhelming (at the time) things like finances/budgets/credit cards were a reason why I thought I needed to try again
AND
I didn't trust my parents.
I don't know why.
I can't think of a single important time in my life when I needed help that they have turned me away.
But, my mind kept telling me, they are such products of their society and I had fought so hard with them to get this marriage, so I tried once more.
AND
I really, really thought he would change. He had done so in the past - traveling because I liked to, watching new shows (!) because I was into it, trying out intelligence because I had tons of it.
At some point, I realized I had married the potential of what the boy could become and not the boy itself.

In the end, it turned out Everything I had feared & that held me back was doable.

Edit: Not just doable but insanely freeing as well.
I have to say, despite the varied emotional hues I may go through, this is by far the most liberating gift I have ever given myself.

The day after

It is amazing what this blog has meant to me.
Such articulate rendering of the life I led with him.
He was all manners of not right for me but for a period in time, we were loved by each other. And perhaps in some alternate universe, if his personality was completely eviscerated, we are still laughing about how Shamu got framed and he is explaining his inanely wrapped theories of how the tides happen because the water recedes in another part of the world (don't ask! Bangladeshi education system).
But when I think of all that transpired in my marriage (the cheating, the emotional withdrawal, the constant pushing away of my needs and the final physical abuse), I know, in spite of the maudlinness, that alternate universe is the crappy, less-than-perfect one.

Today I divorced the boy.
It took me exactly 59 days after the boy hit me to get a lawyer, divide our assets, get the boy to agree to the division and the destruction of the embryos, notarize our severance, and have a kindly old judge "dissolve our marriage and restore me to a state of single and never married".
It's almost as if, by doing so, the 11 years of us never happened.
The sheen of love, confidence and goodwill I gave him was given back to me.
I was and am so much bigger than the life I was leading with him.

A day after the boy hit me, I called in my contacts and got lawyer referrals.
A week later, I shopped lawyers, divided our marriage assets and started working out the logistics of my sister's move to her new University for her brand spanking new Ph.D (so proud of her!)
Two weeks later, I got our asset division & embryo destruction forms notarized, retained a lawyer and filed for divorce.
In the month or so since that incident, I have moved out, visited Costa Rica, told my amazingly supportive parents and am more at peace than I have been in 4 years.
I remain amazed that I was able to do all of this and know fully well that it would have not been possible had it not been for the incredible support system I have in A.D, M.L, R.P, my siblings, and acquaintances. I also suspect that subconsciously, I have been planning my exit for a while now and hence the expediency by which so much was accomplished in so short a time.
In the years since the in-laws moved in, I have been all manner of things: unhappy, frustrated, angry, enraged, bitter, self-doubting, betrayed and devastated. But today, I am unencumbered. And only have to deal with me | my emotions | my feelings | me. No more living with abstract and often indecipherable rules of communication & etiquette, of living on spite and resentment, of being polite in the face of inane conversations.
It was incredible to me that someone I thought knew could have treated me this shoddily but today, I am deeply grateful that our relationship had become the toxic and leprous one that it did toward the end. And that I could leave with no regrets. Unencumbered by remnants of love or longing.
The world is an amazingly beautiful place and I would have missed so much of it if I was stuck on or with him.

The end of posteverafter

11 years, one silly long engagement, a wedding, in-laws, infidelity and a surreal afternoon of abuse later, I am getting a divorce from the boy.

Since November 
In the past 
One year 

Since the last time I posted, I have discovered

The boy brought his mother and brother over to live with us.

3.5 years ago.

And they never left.

Then the boy had an affair. In the traditional sense. With sex and all.

It happened while I was going through IVF.

6 months ago.

And then the boy and I had arguments. And he raised his hand on me.

2 days ago.

And in between all those statements, there was counseling, misunderstandings, starting over, and a terrible fog of resentment.

Could my story get any more melodramatic or brown than that?

I think not.

I am however blessed to have a fantastic support group of siblings (how brilliant is it that my sister is living with me right now), besties, friends in the city, and living away from India.

I can't deal with letting my parents know since they are dealing with their own issues now. And I don't believe I have the strength to take care of them. So any readers of mine who know my parents do keep it quiet.

Onward and upwards to new adventures.