Rationale

In one of the last conversations my soon-to-be-ex and I had, he asked me not to write about him. Let me amend that--he told me not to write about him. This amazed me for a couple of reasons. One, he was indirectly acknowledging that I am a writer, which is something he never really paid attention to or cared about before. He almost never read my blog--he was always "too busy,"--at what? I can't say. I guess at his very mundane, mindless, 8:30 to 4:30 day job, and then he had his very full schedule of sports-watching to attend to in the evenings. When he did bother to read any of my writing, he almost never commented on it. To say he didn't exactly support me in my writing efforts would be an understatement. Whenever I would go into the office and sit down at the computer to try to write, he would find some reason to rearrange all the pots and pans in the kitchen cupboard--at least, that's what it sounded like he was doing. Or maybe he would decide it was a very good time to get out the power drill and "fix" something, preferably in the room closest to the office. You get the idea.

The other reason I was amazed by his comment is that he was apparently thinking ahead, which has never been his strong suit. He was actually envisioning a time when I would have my own space again, a "room of my own," as Virginia Woolf would say, when I would be able to reflect without constant noise and interruption and distraction. And he made the mental leap of realizing that this whole thing would be on my mind and I would want to write about it.

He was right.

I remember very clearly my response to his comment: "Be nice to me, and I won't have to." Objectively, this might sound kind of bitchy (does it?), but it was true. If he had been nice to me, if we had been able to part amicably and be reasonable with each other, I highly doubt I would have felt compelled to create this new blog, to rant and vent and steam.

Needless to say, he has not been nice to me. Not at all. He broke the deal.

And now, I do have a space of my own. I have my own apartment, with an office, and a computer, and no one to bang around the house making noise to distract me. And I am going to write about him, because it's the only way to deal with all this shit and not lose my mind.