I finally told my boss today that D and I are divorcing, and that I want to file for an annulment.
This was a huge, huge task that I’d been putting off for months. Partially because, when D told me that he wanted to separate back in April of 2012, I broke down and became an uncontrollable mess for months. It really affected my output of work, to the point where my boss finally said “I know you’re going through a difficult time, but I need my secretary” and I knew I had to buck up and start putting myself together. And partially because my boss was very vocal, in the beginning, about my marriage being a Catholic marriage and I had to fulfill my end of the bargain, and work it out. I didn’t want to seem like I was giving up.
That last sentence would probably seem laughable to most of my friends. Most of my friends have argued that it wasn’t “giving up”. Even D said, back in September, “Meg has given me more chances than I ever deserved.” To most people, I’ve hung on far too long — and maybe I have. But I’ve lived with this horrible, horrible fear of being judged as flighty, or not taking my marriage seriously. My friends and family, hell, even D, will tell you that this is anything but the case. But I couldn’t make myself understand it, at all. I felt like I had to go down with this ship, I had the ring on my finger, I had put my head to the grindstone and I had to make it work at all costs.
I hadn’t meant to tell my boss today. My boss is a Catholic priest — furthermore, he married D and I two years ago. The idea of telling the man who married us that we hadn’t managed to make it work chilled me. I didn’t know how I’d ever do it. But I did. It just sort of came out. We were talking about marriages and annulments and vocations and I just…blurted it out.
And he understood. He shook his head and told me I was better off, under the circumstances, filing for divorce and applying for the annulment. The fact that D told me he doesn’t know if and when he’ll ever be ready to have children, coupled with the fact that he hasn’t attended Mass since we got married and has no faith in the Church, pretty much nullifies our Catholic marriage right there. I always knew that D only agreed to marry in the Church because I was Catholic and he knew it meant a lot to me. But when we got married, he said he felt it was the right choice, that he was glad we had a Catholic marriage, that we would have children in time and he was okay with raising them Catholic. All of that fell apart within the first year of marriage.
The weight that fell off of my shoulders when I confessed everything to my boss, and when he gave me that response, was incredible. I felt like the terrible fear I’d experienced since December was finally gone. He was the last person I had to tell…and now I am free. D still has to talk to my IL’s about our divorce, but he has to do that, not me, and it’s not my responsibility. Though I’m dreading the conversations that I will have with my IL’s (if they see fit to contact me) after he finally ‘fesses up, I have no more mountains to climb when it comes to telling the truth…and I feel…bittersweet, but free.
Honestly, Megan 