How Can You Just Walk Away From Me, When All I Can Do Is Watch You Leave, 'Cause We Shared The Laughter And The Pain, And Even Shared The Tears

--"Against All Odds", Phil Collins

A weird fact about me is that I've never known anybody personally who's ever gotten divorced. I'm not talking about met or am acquainted with, I'm talking about none of my close friends or friends' families, and no one in my immediate family (cousins, aunts, uncles, &c...) has ever gotten divorced. Much like the ability to smell, the concept of divorce is a foreign one to me.

I understand the idea behind it, though. I completely comprehend why two people decide to call it quits and break-up. That's a rationale that I don't have to empathize very much with to experience. Nope, what I'm talking about is not quite being aware of all that goes into getting divorced. To me it's akin to super-sized break-up. If breaking up with a boyfriend or girlfriend is an 8 on the pain scale, then I'd have to say getting divorced must feel like a 10, with death maybe cranking it all the way up to 11. That's all it is to me, an imaginary plot point on some graph somewhere. I think until I experience it firsthand I'll never full know what it's exactly.

That's rather sad in a way. I hear all the time about friends of friends getting divorced or people on the street that I might pass by. Hell, even Breanne came close, but to me every time I hear the word I always approach in a scientific manner rather than an emotional one. I have the burning curiosity to want to know what it's like in the same vein as wanting to know what it'd be like to have a house that spins or to actually shoot a fireball from one's palms. Thoughts of the devastation it wreaks, lives it destroys, never enter into my consciousness. I have this clinical view of the word that belies any and all understanding of the minutae involved. Somewhere along the line I grew detached from the meaning behind the word and grew into wanting to know more about without going through it myself.

It's just like dying when it doesn't involve someone I know personally.

My mom could tell me a former classmate, a former teacher, or even a third cousin died and I always ask how it happened. Once I get the answer to that, then I seem to forget all about it ever happening. That's not even the worst of it. My grandpa died a few years back and it didn't seem to affect me at all. I took it about as hard as if I took the news the Red Sox lost a game. Yeah, I felt bad, but it wasn't something a good night's sleep couldn't cure. I just didn't feel it.

That's what divorce is for me. It's just a word I don't understand. I'll attack it like any other word I don't understand. I'll look it up on the internet, I'll ask some people I know, but I won't pursue it any further than that. Once I feel I have a cursory understanding of it, that's usually good enough for me. It shouldn't be, though. I should feel more when somebody tells me that another couple is getting divorced. It should affect me somewhat. I should want to care. I should care. Here I call myself a romantic and I can't get worked up about a journey's end as much as I can about a journey's beginning. I should care. I should care because the end of a lifelong commitment isn't something that's supposed to be commonplace. It's supposed to be the exception to the rule. It's supposed to be a big deal. I should care. I should care because whenever someone gets hurt emotionally, it should hurt me too because that's what you're supposed to do when you're a human being. You're supposed to lend support to both stranger and friend alike. I should care because it might happen to me someday.

I don't know--it's just beyond me. Divorce is something that hasn't hit me personally yet and until it does it will remain in that fascinating, but ultimately forgettable category in my brain.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers