Anatomy of a Divorce, II

When we last left the developing history of my ill-fated matrimonial selection, well, all you know is that I met a woman when I was quite young, and now I'm divorcing her. So . . . . . .

When I joined the Marine Corps, I went in open contract. This essentially means that I didn't yet have an assigned job. Afterwards, I was assigned to be a 4066, Small Computer Systems Specialist. This was in 1995, the dawn of the Internet age.

While working in the Marine Corps, I discovered the interesting practice of chatting with people online. This is where I met . . . . . hmm, so many adjectives come to mind. I can't use her real name . . . . . . . until I come up with a suitably descriptive title for her, I'll just use a blank --> _______. So, I met _______ online, through a text based chat.

At the time, she was in art school, as an aspiring starving artist (Hey, it's the truth, what artist thinks they'll become rich? Thus, if you're aspiring to be an artist, you're aspiring to be a starving artist. Life is about choices). She was doing online programming as part of her coursework, and ta da . . . a mistake was born.

We carried on a long-distance relationship for the remainder of my time in the Marine Corps, 3 1/2 years to be exact. During this time, we would spend hours talking on the phone, more hours writing letters, and still more hours in the air, on our way to see one another. I would fly up there in the summer, and she would fly to me in the winter. She's Canadian, who lived in Vancouver, B.C., and I was stationed in North Carolina.

During this time, I was cautioned greatly against the inevitable path I was charging headlong down. My father noted that being lonely on base is not a reason to chain yourself to someone for the foreseeable future. However, his wisdom and foresight were no match for the arrogance and ignorance of youth (clearly).

After the Marine Corps, I flew up to Vancouver to meet up with her. We rented a U-Haul, and I drove to Chicago (I would say "we" drove, however, that would be inaccurate, since this 30 year old "adult" woman didn't know how to drive - a foreshadowing of the ridiculousness to come) where we had an apartment, and jobs, waiting for us.

This period of time would prove to be the epicenter to the approaching disintegration of the dream. In a tiny apartment near the Blue Line of the El Train in Chicago would be the cradle of insanity that beset this relationship of straw. An older, wiser man would have ended the story there. However, my ignorance, and hubris would prove a fitting shackle to the ludicrous insanity of this woman.

Stay tuned . . . .