I still remember my high school graduation like it was yesterday. As I sat there during the many speeches and names called up before me, I couldn’t hear anything. My body was numb. I just sat and stared at everyone I could see from my seat. I tried to memorize their faces and I thought back on specific encounters with some of them. Like the time I was in the third grade and Derek Pilkington wrote the word “dildo” on my hand and told me to go home and ask my mom what it meant. Or the time Jessica Reaves had a sleepover and we all destroyed her family room and spent the next morning cleaning it up before we could go home. At some point in time I was close with a lot of the people that were sitting beside me that day, but somehow over the years we grew apart, made new friendships, and moved on. As I sat in my chair looking around all I could do was cry. Not because I wasn’t ready to graduate and become an “adult” but because I knew that when we left the auditorium that afternoon, my life would never be the same. I probably would never see most of those people again. And although we had grown apart and I couldn’t remember the last time I had a conversation with some of them, they were part of my life for a long time. I felt like I was losing a part of myself. Even though I knew it was time and there would be great things to come for me, I felt an overwhelming sadness.
I have that exact same feeling today. I met my husband, Zach, when I was 19 years old. We went on a double date, though not together, we hit it off better than the dates we had. On our first alone date we went to dinner and a movie, then we walked around at a local arts festival. We talked the entire time and I felt like I had known him forever. He held my hand as we walked around that night and I could hear my heartbeat ringing in my ears. When I got home that night my mom was still up and she asked me how it went. I told her that I had met the man I was going to marry and two years later, I did. August 24th, 2002, I became Brittainy Qualls. Our marriage was never easy. We spent our first wedding anniversary in the hospital while I was on bed rest with the twins, multiple job lay offs, always being broke, Maizy, and a steady stream of bad luck lead us to this. We stopped being husband and wife and became more like two middle school kids who got paired up on a project that no one wanted to do. We tried several times to just start over and try to do better but somehow we always fell back into the same old routine. We have decided to get a divorce and he is moving out into his own apartment this weekend. As I sit here in OUR bedroom, i can’t hear anything. I feel numb. All I can do is cry and try to memorize everything in here before it becomes MY room. His plaid pajamas folded on the dresser and the stack of screws and pens he keeps in his pockets at work scattered on the chest of drawers, his wallet laying there that I gave him for Father’s Day last year and the ceramic plate hanging on the wall that my great grandmother painted with our names and wedding date on it. I’m sitting here tonight with this overwhelming sadness not because I don’t think this is the right thing to do or I’m not ready, but because for the past 17 years I have been Zach’s wife and this has been my family and I know that after this weekend things will never be same. And although I feel like I am losing a part of myself, I know that there will still be great things to come for me. Just as I did when I graduated high school that day, I will be ok.
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