As of about 1:15 this afternoon, I got divorced, in the same DC Superior Court where I married my now ex-husband.

Flashback to 1998. I was 23, and my ex was 25. Our marriage ceremony appointment was scheduled for November 25. As we were getting dressed to go to the courthouse on our wedding day, thinking we had a good two hours to get there, the judge’s assistant called us and asked if we could come now. The judge had decided that he wanted to leave early for his Thanksgiving vacation. If we couldn’t make it in half an hour, we would have to reschedule.

Perhaps we should have seen it as an omen. But we had been psyching ourselves up for weeks. This was going to be the big day. We hurriedly put on the rest of our clothes and jumped in a cab. My ex jumped out of the cab to buy me some flowers. I remember that the judge smelled like cigars. It was all over in a blur. This was not the wedding day that I had dreamed of as a young girl. But I was young, and in love, and we had to marry quickly so that we could get his citizenship process started. I remember crying. A lot. In the few photos that were taken of us, I look terrible. I am trying to smile and look happy, but my face is swollen and red.

I didn’t cry during the divorce hearing.

My hands shook almost violently as I sat with my dear friend Y in the crowded waiting area outside the courtroom, waiting for my ex and my lawyer to show up. Y, who is a yoga teacher and healer, reminded me to strike a posture of balance between open-heartedness and protection: to hold my shoulders back, chest open, to slightly suck in my gut, to make my core strong. You don’t need to protect your heart, she reminded me, you need to protect your core, and you are doing that.

My lawyer had been delayed in the metro and ended up being fifteen minutes late to the hearing. Because I couldn’t get a signal in the lower floor of the courthouse, I didn’t get her calls. So there I was, wondering if she was going to show up. Inside my stomach, an army of butterflies fluttered. Dread rose from deep within my solar plexus. I tried my best to stay within my body and just to be with the tides of fear as they rose and fell within.

My ex walked right past us and didn’t seem to see us–maybe he was pretending not to or trying not to? His face bore a stressed and scared expression, and he was walking quickly. This glimmer of vulnerability touched me. I hadn’t seen him for four months, but he looked the same. I was sort of surprised at that. In my mind, I had made him into someone else, some Other, but there he was, just like the man I married, but ten years older.

At about ten minutes after our scheduled hearing time, he came out of the courtroom and found Y and me. We awkwardly said hi to each other.

“Your lawyer ditched you, huh?” he asked, teasing.

“Yep — that’s why you’re paying her the big bucks,” I joked back.

That was nice. It was nice to smile. It relieved some of the tension in my body and mind. I felt like he was human again, the man I once joked and laughed with, not this Other who had been built up over four months of absence.

I didn’t cry during the divorce hearing. But I wanted to. Oh, how I wanted to, especially when the judge said those words: “no reasonable hope of reconciliation.” Oh, how I wanted to, especially when the judge mentioned the name of the child born of our union, our beloved Sami. But my eyes would not sting, and the sweet release of tears would not come.

It all unfolded as quickly as our marriage ceremony had, a blur of legalese. We were sworn in. Going over the separation agreement, I verified the facts: our marriage date, our separation date, and a host of other questions that my lawyer asked me. Yes, yes, that’s correct, yes, yes, that’s right. My ex, who chose to represent himself, answered all the questions that the judge asked him, essentially asking him if he agreed with what I had said. Yes, your honor, answered my ex to every question. Nothing was in contention; all had been agreed upon.

We both waived our right to appeal, which means that rather than waiting 30 days for the divorce to become final, it will become final as soon as the judge enters it into the docket, which will be tomorrow at the latest. So, as of tomorrow, or maybe even now, we are officially, legally, no longer connected by the bonds of matrimony.

After it was over, we drifted towards each other and hugged in the courtroom. I honestly had had no idea what to expect, but hugging was not something I had considered.

Out in the hallway, my ex and I hugged again, this time for longer, maybe ten seconds, I don’t know how long but it felt like a long time, and it was a real hug, an authentic hug, an embrace that I will never forget. Perhaps it was even more memorable than our wedding kiss. It felt so familiar, so comforting, to be held in his arms, against that body that I know so intimately, although I have not touched it in at least 6 or 7 months.

I remember the last time I tried to hug my ex: back in January, the night before my back surgery, when he came to pick up Sami. I had wanted to hug him the whole time he was in the house, but didn’t. I started to run after him as he was getting into the car with Sami, only to be stopped and informed by my aunt that his new girlfriend, whom I had not yet met, and still haven’t met, was sitting in the passenger’s seat. I turned back to the house as they drove off, so embarrassed, so mortified, so horrified at my naked need for his comfort, his touch, his love. Love that he now reserved for another.

My ex choked up as we embraced.

“Take care of yourself,” he said.

“You too.”

I wanted to meet his tears with my own. But still, they would not come. And as friend reminded me, perhaps that’s because it’s no longer my task to share emotions with him.

It is now, when I think of that embrace, that the tears come. I am aware that I am far, far, from over him. I miss the details of him. The smell of him, the feel of his physical and emotional strength. His strength is no longer mine to draw upon. It is my own strength that I must cultivate now, day by day. I realize that although we are officially divorced, a powerful form of closure, there are so many more levels of closure that I will have to come to within myself. In time, it will happen.

While I can honestly say today that I am glad to be single, and that it is exhilarating and exciting not to NEED a man, there is a profound grief at the loss of him. It is an open and bleeding wound, still. It needs air and sunlight to heal.

My companion, for ten years of my life. My lover. My friend. We shared so much together. We both came from horrendous battlefields of childhoods–childhoods so awful that they make you feel like a freak, an outcast, a broken person, like no one else could ever understand you, like no one could ever love you, and we found refuge in one another. Together, we made the most wonderful, magical, beautiful child. I remember how we planned out the name for the girl we would liked to have had, a sister for Sami. She would have been named Hannah.

So much pain, dissatisfaction, quiet desperation, and ugliness went down during our marriage, during our long, roller-coaster separation, and it’s so beyond true that we are ultimately incompatible. Yet what I remember most is the love that brought us together, the beautiful moments, big and small, strung together like a necklace a decade long. Am I wearing rose-colored glasses? Perhaps. But I’ve decided that the good memories can be mine to keep for as long as I wish, and maybe I’ll hold on to them for as long as I live.

Yet there is no reasonable hope of reconciliation, and it is truly over. Now, even as I mourn the end of ten years of marriage, I see the blessing in this rite of passage, this divorce. It was a good divorce, as good as a divorce could ever be. In some ways, it was more peaceful than our marriage ceremony (even with the MIA lawyer scare).

This is an ending, a stopping place, the place from which a new beginning is inherently born. May we both find joy in the new chapters of our lives. On our separate paths, may we find wholeness and love.