It's unofficially official

I am officially christening this blog "The Scarlet D", to remain as such, as I am now 99% sure that I will be getting a divorce in the next year. I had wavered there for a bit on the blog name, wondering if I had moved too soon in assuming the worst, but no, The Jerk is, indeed as much a jerk as I was afraid. We met for lunch today (my idea) to discuss a variety of subjects, most notably the issue that I want to remove his name from the credit cards of which I am the primary holder. (A smart move, I've been told, in case he goes crazy and drives us even further into debt, I will let him do it on his primary cards and not on mine.)

The whole lunch experience did not go well, as I was not as strong as I had hoped to be and teared up a bit, and then I just had to ask, "So...this six-month thing...is it just to let me down easy?" And his reply, "Not originally - it wasn't, but now, I guess it's just to give you time to get a job and get settled and all." So there you have it. I knew deep down that this was coming, yet actually hearing the words still cut me to the core. I guess I wanted the power. I wanted to be the one to say them. I didn't want to be a pity case that he had to "let down gently." I want him to be miserable, and lonely, and stressed, and on the same sickening roller coaster that I've been on for the last 3 weeks.

As I drove home and cried, I just kept thinking, "I'm going to be a divorced woman. I'm going to be a 'single mom.'" I guess I just grew up thinking this would never happen to me. And now I guess I owe an explanation of my blog name. When I was growing up, my mother, who is extremely judgemental of others, always used to speak of certain women as "Oh, she's di-VORCED," with a raised eyebrow and a tone of indignation. I live in the south in the Bible belt, and it has taken me many years to learn that guilt and shame is not what life in general (and Christianity in particular) is all about. That there's another side to it all - a side of grace and unconditional love and freedom that I never knew existed. Yet what you grow up with is often so ingrained into your thinking that certain words are tainted forever, and for me, "divorced" and "single mom" are two of them. So when it occurred to me that I might become one, my first reaction was to feel a huge wave of guilt and shame. I imagined spending the rest of my life walking around marked, like Hester Prynne, with a scarlet letter "D" on my chest for all the world to see, exposing my sin and shame.

And to some extent the thought of the future scares me enough that I still feel that way just a bit, but not as much anymore. I know that society doesn't see me that way, but what matters is how I see myself. And that is what I must work on for now.