How She Imagined It - Anna Teeples

Three weeks later, Chance walked out of the “Divorce Center” office door. Everything about this place she hated. The stained brown shag carpet, the thirty-year-old fake walnut wood desks that chipped at the seams, the stacks of messy banker boxes in every corner and the awful amber multi-sided hanging light pendant in the corner. Mark wanted to move things along quickly and with a short-term marriage and no children together, they hardly had time to co-mingle assets.

Feeling grimy and sleazy, getting a cheapo quickie divorce, the mediator inferred that somehow she wanted this. Chance didn’t want a divorce. In fact, what she imagined was that at the mid-point of her life she would be settling into a relaxing semi-retired life with her new husband as her only son went off to college. Over the last year, it was clear that Chance was willing to tolerate Mark’s rage. Somewhere along the way she had given up on being happy with her partner and was willing just to ride the dead horse. Mark was absolutely the dead horse. He talked about death, about wanting to quit. To the outside world, he appeared to be jovial and carefree. Yet the more intimate side relieved that he was miserable, and felt he had no purpose. He just wanted out, to walk away, back to his life as man with his own personalized barstool at the neighborhood pub. This life worked for him and he liked it.