Single Again For The First Time 20: 20 Things To Know About Divorce

Vincent Truman

The “Single Again For The First Time” podcast series was devised by me a year ago for two reasons: (1) I wanted to help, in a small way, to draw a road map for those who are approaching, experiencing or surviving divorce, certainly one of the more brutal personal earthquakes an individual can endure, and (2) I wanted log my own experiences, going to potentially embarrassing lengths (some have called it ‘brave’, but I prefer to think of it as ‘essential’), and, with that, create some art, some budding flower amongst the landfill of my marriage.  I have come a long way in that year, which itself was following a year of the painful separation and loss of my best friend, leading to me standing in front of a judge, asking for a divorce I did not want, and stumbling, sometimes recklessly and often ill-advised, through the remainder of that year.

In the podcast series, I laid out every reason I could think of why my marriage went ka-plooey; some of the reasons could be placed soundly at my doorstep, some at my former spouse’s.  I lived through all five stages of grief on videotape, and even found a sixth (“well that happened”) and, even more recently, discovered a seventh (“overall, I’m glad that happened”), in which the loudest memories were of the really lovely, odd moments that we shared.

I’ll share one: we were walking down the alley towards our apartment and heard a SHHHHH sound behind us.  As we looked back, we saw a rapidly approaching rainstorm bearing down on us, looking like a grey curtain in the distance.  We laughed and ran home as fast as we could.  It was small, insignificant, almost too easy to discard over time.  However, memories like that, I am happy to say, have survived intact.

In a recent podcast, I felt the urge to dabble in humor to be unavoidable.  In “Anniversaries”, my present day self takes a call from a younger version of me, anxious to get married and also get burritos at El Cid, a nearby restaurant my ex-wife favored.  Although it dipped its toe into darkness, the video was great fun to perform.  And it hit me.  Great fun to perform.  I was no longer suffering; I could spin the events of the past into a humorous one-person duet.  I liked that.

For the twentieth podcast, I was inspired to lighten the mood even more by playing an elder psychologist making a vlog about what one could expect from a divorce.  Although it too waxes a little dark, it is the lightest and most fun of the series.  And it my pleasure to share this – and the road map to a much nicer clime – now.