Married People and Single Thoughts 

Married people.  Who needs 'em, Right? When you're not married, they can be the HD TV highlighting the stubbly flaws in your life with crystalline clarity.  I mean what's the deal? Right after my divorce, I felt lost at sea, adrift in an ocean of married couples--the lone divorced Rob flotsam drifting from my ex, Ms. Jane Jetsam.

And why is it that flotsam always has to have jetsam?  It's never, "Look flotsam, no Jetsam!" They crash the same parities, they dance naked in the same swimming pools. Flotsam and Jetsam are like the peanut butter and chocolate of water wreckage world.

In my wreckage world, that would be MyEx and I. Well except the dancing naked thing. Ok we did that too, but nobody has pictures.

"Mommy!  There's a whale convulsing in our pool!"

"No Timmy, that's just our neighbor, Rob, dancing. Go hum the Wedding March' at him.  He'll leave."

Yup.  It's true.  Right after the divorce I would have left too, if the neighbors didn't have such a nice pool. It was the only place I could go to get away from the married people, and wallow in my own flotsam.

Don't get me wrong.  I love married people. I was one once. But, after divorce, they're the last thing you want to see, and the first thing that all your old friends are. When you're married, you have married friends. When you're divorced…well, you start off with leftovers.

"Hey Rob, Why don't Suzy and I come over to cheer you up?"

I could think of a hundred reasons.  The primary one for me was that being around happy couples felt like being smothered in a broken glass blanket.  They smothered me with all the love they could, while cutting me with their happiness.  I couldn't take it.

Now, it's been over a year since the state agreed to pull Jane's jetsam out of my flotsam. I'm in a different place, emotionally. Physically I'm in the same place, and I'm unemployed. Still, I'm happier. I've moved away from the pain.

I guess that's why I'm easier on my married friends. I see now that they were just trying to comfort me. Most of their hang-ups, were actually floating around inside of me.  It was like my first break up in high school.  After she left, every time I turned on the radio, they played our song.

A few months later, I tried the radio again. It was then that I noticed that the radio still played the same songs, but they were no longer ours.  In fact, if I listened, they weren't even love songs. At the break-up, Every song was our song, because she'd become an experience magnet.

"Back on the Chain Gang!  That was our song!"  Really? If that was the case, then breaking up doesn't seem like a bad thing.

The same thing happened after my divorce.  Married people were our people. Married people were our song.  I couldn't be around them. It didn't matter if they were sitting on my couch arguing about who didn't feed the cats before they left, it was still "our song."

"OHHH! We used to argue just like that!"

Now it's been a while and I've started talking to married people again. They haven't changed. I have. Oh, I'm still not looking at joining their ranks anytime real soon, but I can associate with them. I've been pulled out of the water. I've left my bitter feelings and open wounds, flotsam and jetsam, and moved on.