To Be Continued

Day two of the trial is done and we still need to go back for a few more hours toward the end of next week. After a two hour delay, I spent the rest of the day on the witness stand yesterday and maybe another twenty or thirty minutes today. It wasn't fun but in a way it was easier than sitting and listening to some of the other testimony I heard that did not get the facts straight. Some things really drove home why I filed for this divorce in the first place, but it's a little surreal to hear the facts uttered out loud rather than just in my head where they usually reside. It gave me a more objective look at the whole situation and how misguided I was from the very start to have jumped into a marriage to someone from a culture I didn't really understand and after such a brief courtship (5 months from meeting to marriage). I look back at my 25 year old self and wonder "Why didn't anyone stop me? Why didn't anyone question me?" Actually, some good friends did but I was too foolish to listen. I had no idea what marriage really meant and neither did my oh-so-soon-to-be ex. The whole 16 years it's like there was never a consciousness of "ours". There was "mine" and "yours". That's not what marriage means. That kind of thinking is just a recipe for constant power struggles and competition. It's certainly not a recipe for happiness and contentment. It's nice to see that the end to the struggle that was this marriage is in sight. There will undoubtedly be more scrapping along the way with issues concerning our girl, but at least the ex will have to stop acting like he has the right to treat me like I am somehow his property. He just hates the idea that I can and have exercised my own free will.