Everybody gets divorced, but that's not what matters.

Everybody gets divorced, just like everybody gets married. Divorce, in fact, is a graduation of marriage. Instead of pomp and circumstance, though, you get lawyers and custody battles.

When I decided I was going to divorce my wife, it was a lackluster day: Tuesday. I had just gotten paid and Spring was right around the corner, making it March, but the day still lacked luster because it was a Tuesday and all Tuesdays lack luster. It’s state law. I was standing in the kitchen looking at the fridge door. On it, held in place by a magnet I had never seen before, was a note from my wife. I couldn’t see what the note said because it was folded over, but scrawled across it in big black bold letters was READ THIS. On the magnet I had never seen before was a cartoon shopping cart. The cartoon shopping cart was simply bursting with cartoon grocery goodness, even the bottom rack. Next to the cartoon grocery cart, and much smaller than the cartoon grocery cart, was a little cartoon family–a cartoon dad, a cartoon mom, and a cartoon kid. Despite the giant size of the cartoon shopping cart and the enormous bits of cartoon grocery goodness that filled it, the little cartoon family was smiling toothily. Grinning. Like goons.

It was horrifying.

I took the note and threw it in the trash without unfolding it, then got a beer out of the fridge and drank it quickly to steel myself. When I was done, I went and stood at the closed bedroom door. I could hear my wife moving around behind it. She was probably organizing her clothes or counting her shoes or trying desperately to cram my shit into an even smaller corner of our sliding door closet. She often did. For a moment, standing there, I missed her, missed us, the way we were, but I just shook it off as nostalgia. There were a lot of things I missed in life–people, places, times, even people, places, and times that had never happened–but it was no use crying about it. Inevitable, perhaps, but no use in doing it.

I opened the door to tell her goodbye, to tell her that I really meant it this time, that it was really over, and saw two gym bags sitting on the bed where we once slept together.

“You’re all packed,” she said.