It’s February, and I’m in my sister’s living room while she tinkers with her laptop, finalizing my divorce. I wonder, when she submits the papers, if my mind will release a deluge of balloons. Will confetti bombs rain glitter over my psyche? Or will I regret it immediately? Some people did, I’d heard. Some people hooked back up with their exes within a year. That won’t be me, I think to myself.
“I think I submitted them,” Misha says, “but it should have given me a case number.”
It is done. We think so, anyway. Where is the confetti? The filer’s remorse? I feel no regret but also no relief. The back of my throat constricts. There is fear. Everything I thought I knew is garbage. My marriage — one expected to prevail beyond our earthly lives — is over after 15 years. As is my 36-year relationship with Mormonism.
When my ex and I agreed to split, we decided to also step away from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. To stop taking the children to our ward house on Sundays and to midweek activities. Mostly, we feared that exposing our son and daughter to the ubiquitous “eternal families” rhetoric would confuse and hurt them as their parents separated. So we’ve stopped attending.
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