One Year Ago

“I NOW PRONOUNCE YOU OFFICIALLY divorced,” I say while staring at the bathroom mirror. “You may kiss your reflection, since that’s the only person you know you can trust, and live happily ever after with.” That’s all I have for a self-help pep talk on this lovely occasion today. No one else knows about the divorce, so I can’t even go celebrate or anything. Time to buy a new vibrator, I guess.

In any case, I’ve kept this to myself because if anyone were to ask Rick about the split, he’d inform them I was 50 percent at fault because I wasn’t as horny as the twenty-five-year-old he found on Tinder. When I start sharing the news with mutual friends or our extended families, Rick’s story will come out, and I don’t want anyone to know how often I avoided sex with my sleazeball husband. He thought his porn addiction should be a turn on, but it wasn’t my thing. The different scents of perfumes he would come home smelling like didn’t help either. I had no idea who else he was sleeping with, but I assumed it was a common occurrence.

Before Rick tried to explain his side of the story—how his infidelity and ensuing divorce were partially my fault, I wanted to put an announcement in the newspaper, so everyone knew not to address me as “Mrs.” or wonder why I have a big white indent on my left ring finger. It would be like a wedding announcement, but the opposite.

I was about to get to it, but then I remembered that announcements are typically written in third person to make it sound like someone cares enough about them to make a formal statement in the name of love. Come on, no one cares that much. If I remember correctly, I wrote ours, and it was something like: “Congratulations to Rick and Hannah Pierce on their recent nuptials. May they be happy and in love for all their days together.” So, because I was lame enough to write my own announcement back then, now I have to undo it and say (as if I’m someone else talking for me, of course): “Condolences and congratulations to Rick and Hannah Pierce on the event of their divorce. After ten long years of bliss, or hell together, depending on which one of the couple you’re talking to, Rick was caught cheating on Hannah. Since there are always two sides to every story, we wish the newly divorced couple the best of luck being single, lonely, and washed up, and eventually wrinkled, forever. Unless you’re Rick, of course, since he’s already moved the hell on.”

Since I decided against the divorce announcement in the newspaper, I feel like I’ve come a long way, maturity wise. Instead of a public mortification, I opted to drop a laxative in Rick’s coffee this morning, hand him his last box of crap, and tell him to get out of my life, and my house too … I won that part. Then again, we’re talking about a habitable box filled with ten years of memories—memories that should all be burned inside of a flaming bag of shit and left on the doorstep of wherever he ends up.

I’m not bitter. I’m thrilled to start my life over at thirty-two with a toddler in tow. There are going to be men knocking my door down once the word gets out that I’m single. Although, it’ll probably just be the police because hopefully, someone will realize I haven’t been seen in months. Other than that, I’ve got this all figured out. I’ll quit my job, learn how to homeschool when it’s time, order all household items and groceries from Amazon, and request that their new drone thing drop off my deliveries so I don’t have to see anyone. If I request that my goods are delivered to the back porch, I won’t even have to open the front door. The best part is, I can eat like shit, wear yoga pants but never work out, and avoid all human contact with friends who want to gush about their amazing marriages and how hungry their sexual appetite is after so many happy years.

My therapist said that the first day of divorced life will be the worst. Well, I think I’ve already made some great strides toward my new future today.

Shoot, I forgot to add something to my list of things that need to be thrown out. My phone. It’s a part of the cleansing portion of starting over. The damn phone is blaring N’sync’s “Bye Bye Bye,” and I wish whoever is calling could hear the ringtone instead of me.

I answer because I need to adult, even though I’m on my way to not adulting anymore. “This is Hannah,” I answer.

“Hannah, it’s Alan. I just wanted to make sure you’re going to be rejoining us tomorrow? I realize you are finalizing your divorce today, but there are some pressing issues we need to go over if you can make yourself available.”

Alan Mole is the wonderful CEO of the company that employs me. He’s the one who cuts the checks for my salary, the one used to calculate my percentage of earned alimony and child support, so I’m screwed if I leave my job. At least it’s me getting screwed this time and not some twenty-five-year-old chick, but this does put a kink in my great plan. “Yeah, Alan, I’ll be there with bells on tomorrow.” I hang up and switch to the Words With Friends app, waiting for the next victim to experience my nasty wrath of rude words. It’s what I consider to be therapy, so I suppose throwing my phone out wouldn’t be the best idea, after all.

Dickle15 would like to challenge you to a game. Do you accept?

Dickle? Sure, why not? How do people come up with these horrible usernames, or find me, for that matter? Maybe I should have been more creative than HannahP84.

Dickle starts the game with the word, shatter. Nothing like starting a game with a seven-letter word. It’s on, Dickle. It’s on. You picked the wrong player this time.

I continue the game with the only word I have to play at the moment. Ironically, it’s the word heart, and so begins another funny episode of “Karma’s Picking on Hannah.”

This will all get easier.

It will get better.

Whatever goes down, must come back up.

Oh, and karma will eventually figure out its got the wrong person, Rick. Just wait.