Postcard from Divorceville

Dear Friends,

I have been kidnapped and taken against my will to a place called Divorceville. I am trying to get back to Margaritaville or to the town down the road called Pillville. My i.d. has been stolen, and I think I may have forgotten my name. My divorce attorney has sent a huge bill to my email address, but the last name is not my own--though it sounds vaguely familiar. I am confused and have been having weird dreams. They might be putting something in the water here in this place called Divorceville. I dreamed that The Someone refused to admit he'd been lying to me about his income and the bonus money he owes me. In the dream we met face-to-face, and he looked odd and somewhat terrifying. He had false teeth and they were very large. I kept trying to be clever, wanting to connect the idea of false teeth with bearing false witness, but I couldn't get the words out.

Please wire tequila immediately.

Happy Second Day of Spring!

I know... Who are you and what have you done with Denise, right?

While I could tell you it's quite possible that my attorney has already spent my retainer, and then I still have not gotten what I need from the Someone to get the re-fi on my house, I think I will simply say that the rose pictured above is blooming outside my front door. Carted here in its pot inside a friend's truck, it took months to adjust to the cooler temperatures and sea breezes, but adjust it did.

I will also tell you that a heron just flew by my window--legs outstretched--its long neck seemingly in the future while its legs are already in the past.

I will tell you, too, that my mom's gastroenterology appointment went well, and that the doctor is as handsome--nay, I'd say even more handsome--than ever. My mom endured nearly constant stomach cramps for a long time, and she is much improved. I think of all the figures of speech we have that relate to this central element of our bodies: turned my stomach, he doesn't have the guts to do what is right, intestinal fortitude, it takes a strong stomach, too much to stomach, bust a gut, butterflies in the stomach, I have a gut feeling, we trust our guts, we gut it out, some things are gut wrenching, divorce is an emotional punch to the gut, some people eat to live, sometimes my stomach is in knots. The sympathetic knot in my stomach is loosening now that my mom is feeling better.

I will tell you that my mom is now wearing earrings everyday--not just when we go out to a doctor's appointment. And I will tell you that today, she put on lip gloss. A true beauty in her red sweater and pink shoes.

A Brief Journey Back to Divorceville

I awake with a vague awareness there's something I need to remember about October.

Yes, yes. In a matter of days, it will be 12 months from the entry of the final judgment in my divorce.

In a hour, I nearly destroy my bedroom looking for the hard copy of the paperwork that I am certain is stashed in a handy file in my cabinet---but isn't. The dreadful black file box reveals only page 1. I tape it to the window sill so as not to lose in the flurry.

Why do I need this document? Two words. "Credits and reimbursements."

The black box yields nothing but a memory of heartbreak. I feel it all again. Muted yes, but it rises up as I touch attorney bills, bank statements, copies of motions. I feel the disbelief layered over the knowing. The grief and betrayal melting into sickness and hysteria. I feel it in my stomach and my chest. The anger. Still there.

In the end, I find an electronic copy on my computer. I print out three copies. While they are printing, I email The Someone. And formulate a plan. When he doesn't get back to me in 48 hours, I'll email him again. I will contact my attorney 24 hours after that second ignored email. Because yes, it will be worth the stress and the expense. One daughter in grad school. The other going back to school after the new year. But wait. As I'm about to ignore the mess and go on with my day, I see his name in my inbox. A check in the mail today, he says.

Maybe when it arrives,  I'll tape it to the window sill for an hour. Let it wave a bit in the breeze while I put the mess back into the box. If I can stand to touch any of it just one more time.

Divorce Advice:#2

This is the 2nd in a series of divorce advice posts that I plan to do every Thursday until I run out of useful things to say on the subject....could go on for a month or two....or not.

Bifurcation sounds a little like amputation. Consider it just as carefully. Maybe there are other options.

California Divorce.com defines bifurcation like this:

It can take many months, even several years, for a dissolution to wind its way through the courts. Faced with this fact, many spouses want to terminate the marriage quickly, even if the other issues in the case have not been settled. There might also be situations in which it makes sense to have a separate trial of a particular issue. In both of those situations, the court will order that the trial is to be “bifurcated.” This means either that the marital status is terminated and the parties are restored to their single status or a separate trial is to be held concerning a specific issue.

Let me clarify. It means that the marriage is dissolved and the final decree of divorce is issued, but the financial settlement can go on and on and on. In other words, the dissolution of the marriage and the financial settlement are cleaved into two separate processes. This could be the greatest thing since the Ginsu knife if you're the one who wants to rush off and get married to your new true love. If that's not you, then by agreeing to bifurcation, you may be giving the go-ahead for your ex to remarry while  you stand at the altar of financial uncertainty. While you are waiting for the joint assets to be divided, a couple of things are likely to happen:

1) You will be paying attorney bills every month

2) Your  ex will be in a honeymoon state of mind, perhaps starting a new family, moving, trying to pay off the charge card for the wedding expenses, and he will have zero motivation to settle his finances with you.

So if  you have not been able to initiate the IDEAL DIVORCE, and your attorney is now doing what you've hired him or her to do, have a discussion about bifurcation. Imagine that the ex and and the new true love have set a date, put a deposit on the venue and the caterer, hired the photographer, and are discussing the pros and cons of a cupcake bar.  If there's no bifurcation, that's some pretty serious motivation to complete all aspects of the divorce unless polygamy is legal where you live.

Bifurcation is commonly favored and approved by the courts in California. Some states do not allow bifurcation. There's a lot of free information on the Internet appropriate to each state. Educate yourself. Bifurcation might be a "state" you don't want to find yourself in because you could be there for years waiting to cross the border. A discussion of bifurcation and its implications might be an appropriate topic as you choose an attorney to represent you.

My divorce advice disclaimer: I am not an attorney, a paralegal, or a legal secretary. Nor do I possess any legal education or credentials of any kind other than having been married to an attorney for three decades and immediately thereafter involved in divorcing him for the next four years. My advice is based solely on my own experience and falls under the broader life heading of Damn It,  If Only I'd Known Then What I Know Now.


Title for this Thursday venture, anyone?  "It's Turdsday: Shit I've Learned About Divorce?" Surely there's someone more refined than I out there with a catchy phrase waiting to be put to good use.

"That Frozen Concoction that Helps Me Hang On"

It's Monday, and despite the fact that I'm not really having a Margarita Monday, I have another beautiful photo of one of my friend Julie's concoctions.

Sour Cherry. From her backyard tree.

I don't think my friend Julie drinks much at all these days. I might have one or two drinks with dinner or while I cook. So the Monday Margarita is a state of mind. Palm trees. Waves. The bright green flash of wild parrots. Maybe a strolling band of mariachis, conversation with a friend. My checkbook lying idle on my desk, and no more attorney bills to pay.

All Communication With My Attorney Will Henceforth Be in Haiku

Allow me to practice.

Supermoon's a dwarf

Your recent bill: Godzilla

My savings: crater.

Let's keep those bills small, people.

I Could Drink a Case of You

Saturday night after the super moon refused to show its face, there was more darkness. I pulled the mail out of my mailbox to find a "letter" from my attorney which wasn't a letter at all. What is was was a photocopy of the judge's ruling on my motion to recover attorney fees. Denied, it said.

 I'd been waiting since our day in court on March 2nd for the news. I'd emailed my attorneys asking for an update a week after the court appearance. The judge was out of town, they said. So I waited some more thinking I would email the attorneys again after the weekend. Maybe the beginning of Spring would bring good news.

Or not. But it wasn't the bad news about the money that was the worst thing. Instead of days of waiting, I could have used a prompt email last Tuesday when the ruling came down. Or a phone call. I could have used a tiny slice of personal communication--something like, "Dear Denise, We're sorry to be the bearers of bad news, but don't be discouraged, and here's what we'll do next..." I could have used a scrawled post-it note stuck to the corner of the blurry photocopy with some kind missive like "hang in there"--or even a crude little drawing of a frowny face. Nope.

I admit to dark thoughts. I have them. I'd been having them less. But Saturday night the dark thoughts had a party. They wore black and carried knives. They looped ropes over beams. They made tea and reminded me that the deranged husband in Tim O'Brien's excellent novel  In the Lake of the Woods killed his wife with boiling water while she slept. I didn't sleep Saturday night. I sat in my bed frozen with dread. I emailed Mr. Ex. I texted him. Then the sun sort of rose--or did what the moon did the night before--lurked somewhere behind the clouds while doing its job in a less than satisfactory way. And that's what I did Sunday. I skipped a good friend's fabulous First Day of Spring party and drank mimosas in my pajamas with M. while we watched basketball. Then I crawled to bed and slept the day away.

When I woke I felt stupid and lazy and realized I had a house full of people whom I love. I cobbled together dinner, took a shower while the chicken was in the oven, then lit the candles and sat at the dining room table like a human being. And somewhere in there I'd talked on the phone with the man who loves me. He was wrestling with his own First Day of Spring demons. "You'll know what to do," he said. "You always do." Or somethin' like that.  Maybe not, I thought. And maybe this thing between us could be going a little better.

I was putting the last of the dishes into the dishwasher when the brass door knocker that nobody ever  uses announced that someone was at the door. Yup. "Someone's at the door," the daughters said without moving as if they knew it was for me. There he was, the man who loves me standing in the rain with a little cluster of daffodils in one hand and a case of wine hoisted onto one shoulder. You read that right. Not a bottle. A case.

I'm still on my feet.

Rainy Day

I just bought yogurt with a hundred dollar bill. Money I was saving for a rainy day. Last night I dug through my bathroom cabinet and pulled it from a half-crushed box that once held some beauty product that undoubtedly promised to make me younger or thinner or more beautiful. That hundred dollars survived most of the last decade, and then last evening as I pulled up to my local bank I discovered my ATM card was missing just hours before I'd be leaving on a trip.

I went home and called my bank and waited briefly on hold while I read yet another maddening email from my attorneys asking for information I've already detailed for them. I cancelled the card and came close to canceling the attorneys as well.

The ATM card and the attorneys are dominos. Things are falling down. Yesterday was a tumble of phone calls:
The guy who's appraising the farmland got two calls, neither of them returned just as the two or three others I've made to him in the last couple of weeks weren't returned. He has my money. I don't have his appraisal. Which is needed in order to calculate how much dough Mr. Ex owes me.
I called the investment bank too. They have even more of my money. A check gone missing.
I called the bar association. They don't have my money, but some of their members have cascades of it. If that money were rain, we'd be hovering around the TV watching some meteorologist yammer on about The Storm of the Century. I'm getting something for that phone call. A complaint form I can fill out.

My Internet also went missing yesterday. More money dispensed for a service I don't actually receive. Every day or two, I'm on my knees under my desk plugging and unplugging, shutting down and starting up. "I don't want you to shut down," my therapist says about my grief and anger. I plug myself into her words and try to stay up and running.

Mr. Ex says the money I used in the 14 months before my attorneys managed to wrench alimony out of him (why o fucking why did they wait so long?) is money that I "took." In his narcissistic book of life, it's not support, and now I owe him. I don't owe him anything. He was "the taker."

Took. Taken. I have. I was.
Taken when we were on our final family vacation and he had no time for family. I was taken by him while he was taken with the Soon to be Little Missus and slinking off to see her. I was taken while I sat next to him at our daughter' graduation. Taken in by his charade as the perfect dad. "He's divorcing you the same way he was married to you," my therapist said. A point well taken. "He ignored you during your marriage and now he's ignoring you in your divorce." Going on four years of ignoring.

I can't take it any more.

So.

I just went ahead and took the money. Take that, Mr. Ex.

Now I have it for the next rainy day.

Notes from the Treehouse

As I lay in bed with the man who loves me, light poured into his kitchen as the sun lifted its head over a far hilltop and settled itself just above the hill he lives on. The Treehouse (my name for his place) feels combustible in the pre-coffee hours of the morning, but we were safe in his dark narrow bedroom I call "The Bunker." I need a bunker these days. "I can't forgive him," I told the man who loves me, turning the conversation to Mr. Ex after we'd discussed a recent betrayal by a friend of mine. I was wounded by my friend, but we'd talked about it. She apologized. I forgave. Chapter closed. Happier pages await in our story. Not so in the three-and-a-half-year divorce saga with Mr. Ex.

Yesterday the barrage of emails from my attorneys left cartoon character dollar signs imprinted on my eyeballs. We're into the land of six-figures now. Spent in the struggle to get my half of the community property. Thirty years of marriage. A third of it with begged and borrowed furniture, our first meals cooked in a donated and dented electric frying pan. I put him through UCLA Law School. Supported him with love and money. I want to hate myself for staying home and raising our daughters and trusting him, but it's hard to hate the memory of that. So I hate him, the way he Bernie Maddoffed me. The way he secretly plotted and schemed for months to leave us and then dropped his bomb just before M. left for college. Not even the courage to let her know before she committed to a school far from home. I hate him for delivering his message of doom by cellphone to C.---a thousand miles away when she'd just been home and he could have told us all when we were together. I hate him and his ruthless conniving Little Missus who, in my mind, deserves to have her family destroyed. I hate him more with each passing day and dollar.

"Something could happen that might change everything," said the man in the bunker. "If he gets sick, say." Oh, there could be a deathbed reconciliation, I suppose. But I don't really see myself in that scene. Even if my daughters are there,  I see a hole as big as a bomb crater. A hole with years lost. Years that can never be found.

Dear Mr. Ex

Dear Mr. Ex:

I have spent this Friday evening actively loathing you.
The money I have dispensed on attorney bills trying to get you to finish up our financial affairs is now an amount too terrifying to utter.
The brain power I have given over to the rage and grief at the way you have treated me is a creativity-devouring, heart-shredding monster.
Someday that monster will devour you and spit out your bones one by one. I will gather them up and hang them in my tallest tree as wind chimes. The sound will remind me that you're gone, and I will dance.

It's Not a Trojan Horse

Beware of Ex wives bearing gifts?  No need. 

Call me a fool, but I'm having another go at it.

Dear  Mr. Ex:

I send you these mementos of happier times, and I ask you to consider the significance of each one. Think. Remember. We had a pretty good run.  In fact, at the risk of beckoning a visit from depression, I’d even say that some of the years I spent with you were among the happiest in my life.

All that’s finished now. You have a young wife, a beautiful son, and the beginnings of a whole new life complete with a prestigious career that you worked hard for. The beginnings of that career grew from the seeds planted by the two of us and nurtured by me.

You might recall that I made a conscious decision to “put all of my eggs in one basket.”  I gave up working to raise C. and M. I gave up working to support your career and your efforts. Every place we ever lived together, I made into a beautiful home. I did my best to do all of the errand running, the chores, the household management, the home improvements, and the child rearing so that you could put your energies into your work. My appointment books and day planners from the years of our marriage are records of intense devotion and a full schedule of domestic engineering.

All I want at this point, Mr. Ex, is that we finish dividing our joint assets.  I ask myself daily why you have not given me what is mine under California law. Is it the influence of your partners? Your wife?  Do you think I don’t deserve it? Do you harbor secret fears of severing the final ties with me? Do you think I will give up? It’s only the last question I can answer. I won’t give up.  So please, let’s not waste our time and energy on this any longer.  I’ve spent pretty close to $50,000 on attorney fees.  It’s sickening to think what that money might have bought.  I do not know what you have spent—I suspect it’s dramatically less, but the two of us could have done a lot of better things with that money.

Please. Raise your son. Love your wife. Do your work. And finish your business with me.

Sincerely,

Ex-in-the-City

In this email is a letter to you

Crickets are chirping on my patio. Candles blaze in my living room while my dogs dream, stretched out on the rug at my feet. My wine glass beckons.
I just sent Mr. Ex the letter I have been working on for two weeks.

             Mr. Ex,

             I am writing to thank you for agreeing to divide some of our joint assets.  I hope we continue to make progress toward a final settlement. 

             I wrote these beginning lines to you, as I was en route to Nebraska where I attended the graduation of some friends at UNO.  I also visited your family.  That  visit brings me to the reason I am continuing this rather difficult project of writing to you.  We have important family milestones approaching, Ex.  M. will graduate in May of 2011, and C. and N. (the latest intelligence reveals) may have their wedding in the fall of 2012.  My hope you is that you and I will both attend these events and be able to look each other in the eye and share in our daughters’ joys.  I do not want either of them to fear any drama between you and me.  I think wrapping up our division of joint assets and signing off on our final agreement would, for me, be a big step in that direction.  

             I want you to know that at this point, just over three years from the day you told me our marriage was over, I am ready for some version of peace.  The heartbreak is behind me now.  It’s tough to be rejected, to be “un-chosen,” but I really want to get on with my life, concentrate on my writing, and be at my mom’s side whenever she needs me.  You have a wife, a son, and perhaps more children (and grandchildren) in your future.  You are, and always will be, C. and M.’s dad.  The four of us are no longer a family, and while I do continue to mourn that fact, I realize there is no point dwelling on it.  I want to go forward, not remain stuck in our current limbo with our unresolved financial matters digging a hole of resentment deeper and deeper.

            And so the last verse is the same as the first.  Let’s wrap things up, Ex.  We’ve verbally agreed on what the division of assets should be.  There’s been a draft of an agreement on the table for years.  If you have comments on that agreement, my attorney and I need to hear from you.  I’ve spent more than $40,000.00 in attorney’s fees.  Continuing to drag out our financial settlement is most definitley an impediment to future peace. 

            As a final thought, I ask you to ponder the last lines of a Robert Frost poem that I’ve heard you quote many times:

                      The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

                  But I have promises to keep,

                  And miles to go before I sleep,

                  And miles to go before I sleep.

         Let us tend to the work required of us.  Though we are no longer promised to each other, let’s keep the implied promise inherent in our relationship to  two people we both love.

                                    Sincerely,

                                    Ex-in-the-City

How Big Is It? #2 or DESPAIR

It was so big last month, I didn't pay it.
Now it's bigger.

Mr. Ex,
It's only fair that you reimburse me for half of my attorney fees (total now somewhere north of 40 grand) since you are the one who has dragged this out for almost three years.
Oh, and could you tell me please why you are doing this?

The Check at the End of the Rainbow

So...... for months my attorney has been trying to wring a sizable chunk of money out of Mr. Ex. The court ordered Mr. Ex to fork over said hunk of green back in October of '08. That's right. Bush was  president. The polar ice caps were bigger then. John Edwards was still a respectable guy, and I still had some faith that the end was in sight. The absence of the funds went unnoticed for a bit--quite a while to be exact because whenever a bill from my attorney arrived in the mail, I promptly paid it. Then as my ability to fork over large sums of money waned, I went back through my box of invoices. Voila!
The quest to get Mr. Ex to pay up began--oh, I don't know--some time at the end of '09, and then around the last week of January or the beginning of February, I actually succeeded in speaking to Mr. Ex on the phone. He told me he was nearly certain he'd paid it, but he was requesting bank statements from his bank (the last living human under age 60 who doesn't  do online banking?) BUT if he hadn't paid it, he would put a check in the mail, pronto!
So.....a couple of days ago, my attorney let Mr. Ex's attorney know that contempt of court proceedings would be initiated. Supposedly, the check is in the mail.
Bets, anyone?

Photo Credit: istockphoto.com

Drumroll, Please

After the exchange of 11 emails over the past 8 days plus a follow up in-person conversation, Mr. Ex, his attorney, my attorney & I have finally scheduled a phone conference.  So.......2 years, 6 months, 10 days, and approximately $30,000 in attorney fees since Mr. Ex told me he wanted to marry someone else, we just might have a shot at finally settling our financial affairs.
I find myself feeling pissed off rather than celebratory. Could I borrow one of those drumsticks for a sec, please?

The Turtle and the Heart of Stone

I had coffee with Mr. Ex this morning.  We sat on a bench in my neighborhood with coffee to-go and fresh goodies from a bakery. "Tell me the scenario you are envisioning," I said.
"For settling our financial affairs?" he asked.  As if we had any other kind of scenario in the works.
So he said that, really, we weren't very far apart in our two versions of how we think things should be divided. That was news to me because in the last draft from his attorney, the irrevocable trust was still being cut in two, there was no mention of his bonus from 2008 or 2009, or any confirmation that he would spring for half of my attorney fees.
"Really?" I said. "Then why is it taking so long and why doesn't your attorney answer my attorney's questions?" I went on to say that I wanted the four of us to meet face to face and hammer out the agreement until we were finished, that I didn't want any more back and forth and asking and re-asking the same questions. I said I didn't want it to take 2 or 3 months to get a resolution on one point only to go on to another something that needed resolving.
"Let's do it in a conference call," he said. We narrowed it down to a couple of dates, and I said again I wanted that call to be the end of it. Nothing to follow but our signatures on a document. Then the money. And the whole deal should only take a couple more weeks. That's the way it would be, he said.
Mr. Ex didn't look at me the whole while we talked, and I looked at him not looking at me. We had a "Pleasant Chat" at the end, but I was faking it. I feel no pleasantness at all toward this man who was once the love of my life. At 19 I was certain he was my soulmate. Now only the tiniest crack in my heart of stone peeks open when I think of how I refused to give up on him. On Us. I hung on.  I didn't know then there was a time for surrender.

Here Comes the Sun

After six days of weather that made me think the perfect man might be a builder of arks, the sun came out yesterday morning.

The aftermath of the storm is that my street now looks like a papier maché project.















"Did you notice the mountains?" I asked a little old lady I encountered while walking my dogs.
"No English," she told me. (I think she was Chinese).
"Snow," I said and pointed to the hills behind her.
"No," she said, nodding her head yes.
"Snow," I said, trying again as I fluttered my fingers delicately and let my hands drift downwards. "Snow on the hills. Look." But I couldn't get her to turn around. It was startling to see the snow so close and it made me giddy to have no one to share it with. I restrained myself though as I finished my walk. I did not bound through the neighborhood embarrassing my dogs exclaiming about the snow.

Today, the second day of sunshine, there are still rogue puddles in the park that look like small lakes. But my patio  is now no longer a cesspool of floating dog poo. It's clean and dry, and the sandbags have been moved to the side so I can use my back doors again. Inside, my floors inside have been Roomba-ed for about the 50th time (does anyone else love their Roomba so much they talk to it? I think if they made little outfits for Roombas like they do for those plastic lawn geese, I might dress mine up.)

I'm so happy about the sun that I don't even care that Mr. Ex did not return my latest phone call which I made to him after my attorney emailed me on Friday, telling me that Mr. Ex and his attorney are still refusing to address the issues of his bonuses & reimbursing me for half my attorney fees-- and that they are still trying to divide the irrevocable trust. I'm not sure if it was desperation or optimism, but I called Mr. Ex up and asked him out for a drink so we could talk. Maybe mold spores have taken hold of my brain, but I really think if we were seated in a dark bar with Margaritas in our hands we could work this out.

wow

I failed to mention that Mr. Ex called me yesterday. Which is to say that he actually returned a call I had made to him.
Fanfare. Fireworks.
He said his attorney would get back to my attorney.
He said we were close to an accord in the division of our joint assets.
He said he thinks he paid the missing attorney fees. He's "checking on it." And that if he didn't make the payment he would.
Any bets on how much longer this is going to take? Let's do one of those sport-type-pool-things where people try to guess the score. I will donate $100.00 dollars to Haiti in the name of the person who comes closest to guessing the date Mr. Ex and I sign our agreement re our joint assets.
Hmmm. That might take a while. I'll just donate the $ to Haiti now  & take the person who is closest to guessing the date out to lunch.
Go ahead. Guess.

Two Years, Five Months, Two Weeks & One Day Since Mr. Ex Left and We Still Have Not Divided Our Joint Assets

"I didn't hear a thing," my attorney wrote in an email a couple of days ago. "I also didn't hear back with regard to the missing attorney's fees."
Do good things really come to those who wait? Who said that anyway? I put all the divorce stuff on the back burner over the holidays. What with graduation and all, I just wanted to let it go. But now in the year TWENTY TEN, Two Thousand and Seven has a long-ago ring to it like "Once upon a time," or "In a galaxy far, far, away..."
The phrase, "Divide and conquer" keeps worming its way into my thoughts and I'm afraid I may soon be murmuring it aloud mantra-style like the ancient father-in-law Bill Hickey played in Forget Paris. "You Got It. Toyota,"was the slogan that took over his befuddled brain and my brain is definitely playing the Divide and Conquer Channel. Me in a Divide and Conquer sandwich board on the sidewalk outside Mr. Ex's office. Me with Divide and Conquer stenciled in body paint camped in the driveway at his house. Or on the church steps when he comes out of Mass. At his favorite Peet's, perhaps. I'm not crazy, mind you. Just focused.
I got my Master's Degree. Now, I'll get my half of the joint assets.

It might have been the full moon that made me do it. I called Mr. Ex while I was in France. I was begging for mercy, I sobbed to his voicemail--asking him to please co-operate in the division of our joint assets. I'd been waiting for weeks for a response to an email I'd sent him in which we went dancing around again over how things should be divided--but there was no response and I was feeling desperate. Maybe you'd like to suggest a revision because I simply have no more steam for this, I wrote in the email. I want all of this to be over, I want a life where I don't ever have to discuss dividing anything with you again. So, please, you propose something, please. Soon, please. I ask you to imagine what it would be like, really really like for you if the tables were turned. Go ahead imagine it. Somewhere between the email and the phone call, I depression-dialed my sister-in-law and it was 4 a.m. and luckily she didn't have her phone turned on. I think it's the lack of engagement that makes me feel so crazy--the silence, the nothing.

So all I hear is the clock ticking.

Time elapsed since Mr. Ex left: 2 years, 2 months, 3 weeks, 1 day and approximately 6 hours.

My attorney fees so far: Roughly $15,000.00