<commit_before>---
layout: single
title: "Completely Mental Part III: No Thirteenth"
subtitle: "In which our hero is dealt a rather categorical setback."
excerpt: "So take a deep breath and count back from ten, and maybe you'll be alright."
tags:
 - depression
 - anxiety
 - mentalhealth
 - marriage
 - divorce
category: [articles, essay, depression]
date: 2017-04-02
last_modified_at: 2017-07-30 22:15
header:
  image: /assets/images/2017/march/2017-03-21-forever-in-12-years.jpg
  teaser: /assets/images/2017march/2017-03-21-forever-in-12-years.jpg
  caption: The place where forever lasts 12 years.
featured: true
---

<div class="notice--warning">
<h4>Beware: Falling Serifs</h4>
<p>This is part three of an ongoing series I'm calling <a href="https://incumbent.org/sad/">I've Been Sad</a></p>
</div>

First of all I'd just like to say that this is the hardest part of this series that I've written yet. I wanted to write this back in April, but I couldn't have written it then, and doing so would have meant sharing some private matters with the public at large before the appropriately members of our private lives were up to speed. A lot has happened between now and then, and I'll do my best to make sense of it all as we go.
{: .notice--warning}

{% include toc %}

# No Thirteenth

Two weeks after I started my partial hospitalization program, and two days before our 12th wedding anniversary, Liz told me that she thought she wanted a divorce. She told me that she was 95% certain. 

I was 95% certain that she should have killed me so that I'd never have to know.

# Born in Fire

Liz and I met the summer of 2001. I was still living in *NoVA*, and she was an undergrad at NYU visiting a friend for the summer in Maryland. We moved pretty quickly, but the real gasoline on our grassfire was 9/11. In the course of one day I became acquainted with her parents in Connecticut, and was trying to get her out of Manhattan on what would end up being the last train to leave Penn Station. 

She stayed with me for a few weeks in the aftermath of a tragedy that defined a generation. We were both a bit shaken, but while I could see the smoke from the pentagon, she watched the second plane strike the tower in the rear-view mirror of her shuttle. Eventually she had to go back to New York, but the cement had formed around us and would eventually be reinforced by sixteen years and two children.

There were a few times where Liz would mention 9/11 and ask me if I thought that event was why we were together. I would usually think it wasn't a nice thing to say to me, I felt like maybe she wondered why she was even with me at all and was looking for a reason. I don't know the answer because it's impossible to know. I couldn't be mad about it or anything, because I had the same thought now and then,  but I didn't know what I was supposed to do with any answer I might arrive at. I didn't want it to make any decisions for me.

Before that summer in 2001, I used to really want to be married. There were two people I felt like I wanted to be married to by then! I changed my mind somewhere between 2001 and 2003, and I was suddenly certain I didn't want to ever get married. I had a hard time feeling secure in a relationship, but also was unwilling to really go all-in on any one person. Any reason or justification I have for any of it is completely cliché and unoriginal. Essentially it all boils down to being predictably symptomatic anyway. 

Several years ago when we were first in trouble, I made sure I was fully both-feet committed to my marriage, and this added an extra bit of backspin to her telling me that she wanted a divorce. I don't regret it at all, but it didn't make it easier.<commit_msg>first revision flag<commit_after>---
layout: single
title: "Completely Mental Part III: No Thirteenth"
subtitle: "In which our hero is dealt a rather categorical setback."
excerpt: "So take a deep breath and count back from ten, and maybe you'll be alright."
tags:
 - depression
 - anxiety
 - mentalhealth
 - marriage
 - divorce
category: [articles, essay, depression]
date: 2017-04-02
last_modified_at: 2017-07-30 22:15
header:
  image: /assets/images/2017/march/2017-03-21-forever-in-12-years.jpg
  teaser: /assets/images/2017march/2017-03-21-forever-in-12-years.jpg
  caption: The place where forever lasts 12 years.
featured: true
---

<div class="notice--warning">
<h4>Beware: Falling Serifs</h4>
<p>This is part three of an ongoing series I'm calling <a href="https://incumbent.org/sad/">I've Been Sad</a></p>
</div>

First of all I'd just like to say that this is the hardest part of this series that I've written yet. I wanted to write this back in April, but I couldn't have written it then, and doing so would have meant sharing some private matters with the public at large before the appropriately members of our private lives were up to speed. A lot has happened between now and then, and I'll do my best to make sense of it all as we go.
{: .notice--warning}

{% include toc %}

# No Thirteenth

Two weeks after I started my partial hospitalization program, and two days before our 12th wedding anniversary, Liz told me that she thought she wanted a divorce. She told me that she was 95% certain. 

I was 95% certain that she should have killed me so that I'd never have to know.

# Born in Fire

	//@emory — tie this back to the timeline in part 2 and reduce duplication

Liz and I met the summer of 2001. I was still living in *NoVA*, and she was an undergrad at NYU visiting a friend for the summer in Maryland. We moved pretty quickly, but the real gasoline on our grassfire was 9/11. In the course of one day I became acquainted with her parents in Connecticut, and was trying to get her out of Manhattan on what would end up being the last train to leave Penn Station. 

She stayed with me for a few weeks in the aftermath of a tragedy that defined a generation. We were both a bit shaken, but while I could see the smoke from the pentagon, she watched the second plane strike the tower in the rear-view mirror of her shuttle. Eventually she had to go back to New York, but the cement had formed around us and would eventually be reinforced by sixteen years and two children.

There were a few times where Liz would mention 9/11 and ask me if I thought that event was why we were together. I would usually think it wasn't a nice thing to say to me, I felt like maybe she wondered why she was even with me at all and was looking for a reason. I don't know the answer because it's impossible to know. I couldn't be mad about it or anything, because I had the same thought now and then,  but I didn't know what I was supposed to do with any answer I might arrive at. I didn't want it to make any decisions for me.

Before that summer in 2001, I used to really want to be married. There were two people I felt like I wanted to be married to by then! I changed my mind somewhere between 2001 and 2003, and I was suddenly certain I didn't want to ever get married. I had a hard time feeling secure in a relationship, but also was unwilling to really go all-in on any one person. Any reason or justification I have for any of it is completely cliché and unoriginal. Essentially it all boils down to being predictably symptomatic anyway. 

Several years ago when we were first in trouble, I made sure I was fully both-feet committed to my marriage, and this added an extra bit of backspin to her telling me that she wanted a divorce. I don't regret it at all, but it didn't make it easier.
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