Love is all fine and good until someone says "separation."

I think I'm a reasonable person. I try to be. I do lead with my emotions, but generally logic and do-good takes over the freaking out part of my brain. Most people that know me, even pretty well, would say that I'm "tough as nails," or "sassy," and that's not entirely untrue. What they don't know, or maybe they do, is that, in Bob Dylan's words, "She breaks just like a little girl."

I am extremely sensitive. I cry at sad movies, songs, quotes, videos, commercials, etc....I am a hot, emotional mess. I might make a shitty comment in the middle of one of these episodes, but my emotions are raw and on display. I have a T-shirt, and I don't wear novelty T-shirts as I once did, but this one is black with pink lettering that says, "I wear my heart on my sleeve," and cleverly, the little T-shirt people embroidered a pink heart on the sleeve. It pretty much epitomizes me.

I have been in love seven times in my 36 years. There may be a love barometer I could gauge those loves on, I dunno, but there are those that resonated more than others. I was engaged at 21, which was incredibly stupid beyond my lack of years and knowledge, and when that relationship broke up, I thought nothing could ever be worse. I was sadly, very wrong.

My father always told me that when you met "the One," you would know, and so I think I aspired to that ideal. I honestly can't say that I felt that "bolt" or whatever with  my 21-year-old self, but I genuinely thought I did with my husband. I was never really a truly pissy single person that put a hex on all happy people, but when I met my husband, I think I understood why those bitter people were angry. Ahhh...happiness, like being wrapped up in a blanket straight from the dryer on a cold day and feeling like nothing could ever damage or change that moment.

And now, I've been married 6 1/2 years, 10 months of which have been comprised of separation, and I am no wiser than I've ever been. I don't know what went wrong. I thought love conquered all, all you need is love, love will keep us together, love means never having to say you're sorry. I'm so disillusioned, I don't know what to think. I can function without my husband, sure, but I don't know how to trust or truly love again. And now we're getting into the fun, nitty-gritty of divorce, who pays what, the mortgage, the cell phone, and it doesn't really remind me of the day that I pledged my love for eternity. Although, if death do us part is the deal, I jokingly said, "Well, maybe that can happen sooner rather than later. " I don't know; I never imagined myself in this situation; my dad lied to me, or more accurately, was part of a generation that didn't believe in divorce. All I know, is that I've heard the sound of my heart audibly breaking over the last 10 months.

I think marriage is a great thing, I still do, really. I just rally against anyone having to feel like I have felt for almost a year, that I'm not good enough or enough of enough to make the person you pledged your life to live happily ever after. I don't think that happily ever after is a myth, I just don't know how I completely botched it, to the point, that if I can find a book club and someone to teach me to knit, I don't even care about men anymore. And I'm not a lesbian, not that there's anything wrong with that...but I'm just not...so there's that.