I'll give you Rational!! I think that it is time...

So it's been quite awhile since the wasband decided to come tell me he thought we should divorce. This news was of course not surprising to me at all considering all the back and forth and arguing that has gone on between us for sometime. What was considerably surprising was the reasons he gave.

Some of these reasons I cannot deny had merit. I was a depressive mess who never seemed happy or to care about anything while I lived in California. I was away from all my close friends, even though I made some great, new, really close friends.

While in Cali, I couldn't find work the first couple of months that I lived there, only adding to the depression funk. Bet you didn't know that in Cali you cannot work with a practicing attorney as a paralegal if you are a barred lawyer in another state. Jobs that I could get were not really at par with all that education that I had received and paid for.

The original thoughts of moving to North Carolina quickly faded, with the wasband's plans to possibly switch to the counter intelligence division. That then turned into the wasband's plan to possibly attend this illusive language school in Monterey and learn Arabic there. Moving to NC soon after marriage quickly turned into us living in Cali for over two years.

As you can imagine this lifestyle was not what I had signed up for. Sure I knew he'd be busy and I would have to make friends, that there would be deployments and separations, but not getting to begin my career and moving to a new city right after I was beginning to feel comfortable in the last one, just sucked. Numerous crappy fighting that will have to be broken down on future blogs happened in San Diego from time to time. But then came Monterey....

Moving to Monterey was no better for the career situation. I started temping and actually got to perform some legal prep work. Later I even got to work in the county courthouse as a paralegal in their legal self-help department which was rewarding. However, where the career situation slightly improved in the new city, the relationships, with the wasband, and with possible new friends only worsened.

In Monterey I had very few friends, and the only friends I made were work friends. In San Diego I met most of my close friends from being neighbors or through Tim's work colleagues who had wives. In Monterey all of Tim's friends in class were very single, not married, or women who were not interested in being friends. Because of the transient nature of Monterey, because most living there would only be there for school, neighbors rarely, if ever spoke or even waived in my direction. Life sucked there and my depression only deepened. This did not make me be a good supportive wife, I truly believe. But as I also believe, the depression was not entirely location related.

In Monterey we only grew more and more apart. The wasband became entrenched in his studies, as I knew he would. But studying also included drinking all night out at one of the bachelor's houses, blacking out from being so drunk, being as rude to me as possible whilst being drunk, ignoring me for the most part while sober or hung over, telling me that I should get some friends (because I didn't have tons back on the east side), getting mad at me for trying to join him on the "military party functions" because he did not want to be the only one there with a spouse (all the others were single), and screaming two feet from my face when ever we had an argument. Oh Wait....I forgot, being drunk in our mutual friends wedding (yes he was in the wedding and drunk) and grabbing the back of my scarf part of my dress and telling me that, "He could f-ing kill me" and that I shouldn't walk away from him.

I wanted so bad to be a good wife, future mother. I wanted to be supportive of him and his studies, making dinner every night, and keeping the house clean. But his weekend partying, his ignoring of me, our fights, his out-right meanness, my health issues and admittedly my depression, did not allow for awesome wife-ness to happen. Inevitably the marriage rapidly deteriorated, and despite both our intention to not completely give up on the marriage, we both decided it was best if I moved to the east coast, where I could begin my career and make more money, and he could concentrate more on studying, or more drinking, or find another significant other...whatever you want to believe.

We stayed in touch until the day in May, with every intention to continue our marriage. We talked of the future, he called me nearly everyday and told me he loved me. We still had fights, like on last Thanksgiving when he told me not to bother coming because I would inevitably piss him off. But oh he still loved me, blah blah blah. And yes thereafter, we still spoke over the phone nearly everyday and he still told me he loved me and we still spoke of the future together.
Well, in May he drove straight up from his new station in North Carolina (he finally got there, sans me) and told me that he did not want to be married anymore and gave me his reasons. It did not take me too long into the conversation to realize who of us was more rational and logical.

Part of the conversation went something like this:
Wasband - "I blame you for failing out of the Arabic class and you were not at all supportive."
Janet - "I admit that I could have been more supportive and was very depressed, but what specifically can you point to? Give me an example of something."
Wasband - "Well, when I asked you to help me study and I gave you the flashcards, you would just laugh at them and not even try to help me study."
Janet stares at wasband in disbelief.

ARABIC USES ANOTHER ALPHABET!!! It has squiggly lines and other characters (see above missing the prenunciation in english). How was I supposed to help him with flash cards when I can't read the Arabic writing on them?? And furthermore, since when is a spouse responsible for their spouse doing well in school? My mother received two Masters Degrees and never once asked my dad, or required him to provide her with learning or studying assistance. But she sure did keep up better with the cooking and cleaning. Gotta love those devoted 60's southern housewives.
Apparently, it would have been more rational for the wasband to have created a pre-nup requiring, every night cooking and cleaning, no illnesses, ignorance of alcoholism, the patience of a saint, and of course, a thorough grasp of the Arabic language.