I’m almost exclusively an Order Processor here in the DC Container Store, and from what I’ve observed about all of the Order Processors I’ve met here, they’re all pretty weird. They’re all quiet and focused, and when they do say something (that isn’t business), it tends to be random. They have zero control over their hair, and they’re socially awkward.
And before you say anything, yes, I know I’m describing myself. It’s nice that I fit in somewhere.
In February of 2017, I ended my two-year writer’s block by cranking out a story for publication (rejected). I then signed up for a writing contest, and that kept me busy for a while until I got voted out. And then, that spring, I made the conscious decision to write a novel (I add that distinction because I wrote my first novel by accident). When that was done, I wrote another one. And another. I never knew what I was going to write, just that I should sit down and do it. And so, I proceeded to work on short stories and novels constantly through the next two and a third years, rarely missing a day, until the wall I just hit.
I can’t overstate how many times I’ve finished a chapter and informed a friend, “I have no ideas for the next one,” only to start work on it the next day. This is different. But this is an unfamiliar feeling, thinking about my novel and coming up with absolutely nothing.
I’m not worried, I will write again. But I am a little unsettled.
I just took a personality test for a potential job. There were sixty questions, and over 20 percent of them were about how much cocaine I used. Not “Do you use cocaine?”; but “How much cocaine do you use?” Which I believe says a lot about the company.
Lest I forget, the questions about my cocaine usage weren’t the only things from this test. They were concerned about my marijuana, heroin, and meth usage (though not as much as cocaine), and they wanted to know not if, but how many times I’d faked an injury/illness to get out of work, as well as how much money I’ve stolen. I’m feeling profiled.
I’ve written a lot about what happened with Kate over the past six months, and I’m sure you all are tired of it, but here is the final milestone: Today is the day when we go from separated to divorced. The marriage, while having ended in December, is over in the eyes of the law.
After all this time, it feels like another day to me, so I’m going to continue to search for a full-time job while reporting into my part-time one and try to get back to writing. When the papers come in the mail, I will sign them, and my life will continue on the trajectory it’s been going for the past six months.
This divorce isn’t 100 percent behind me, though, and considering what I had to go through to get to where I am, it really shouldn’t be. But it’s mostly behind me, and as long as I don’t wallow in it, I’m entitled to mourn, even after all this time.
To mark the occasion, I changed my relationship status on Facebook. I had the option of “Divorced,” but I chose “Single,”* because I will not be defined by a marriage that was ended without my permission or even knowledge. I’m not the ex-Mr. Kate Schroeder, I’m Jeremiah Murphy, and I like being me.
* Facebook is extraordinarily helpful when you change your status to single. It offers to block the other person or hide how they can see your current or past posts. It just wants you to feel comfortable.
I’m not a success by any means. I’m only a marginally published author, and I don’t think I’ll be published any more than I already have been. I’m not an artist, not anymore, even after all the work I put into it over the past ten years. I’m divorced and living in the curtained-off living room of a one-bedroom apartment, most of my stuff in storage. I can’t get a job, despite four solid months of looking—though I do have insurance and some work at The Container Store. The Murphy name terminates with me, in that I have no children.
When my ancestors, who fought and toiled their way through Ireland and Poland to get to the United States and battled in wars and suffered to bring me to being, look at me, will they be disappointed?
Probably not, because I’m happy. I’ve got a lot to worry about, but I live a good life. I have lived a good life. I’ve seen the world. I lived in one of the most exciting cities on the planet for six years. I’m living in an exciting city now. I’ve met countless people who have enriched my life. I’ve written six novels and am in the home stretch of a seventh. I’ve got a cat who may be the most annoying animal in the world, but he is the most precious thing to me. My roommate is the Queen of Cracking Me Up.
I know that my ancestors would see that I’m not toiling in a field eighteen hours a day, that I had married for love, that I’m broke but not starving, that my name and my memory will carry on long after I’m dead because of the people I’ve touched—not just because of genetics, that I can turn my dreams into words that live in my hard drive, but may go elsewhere, who knows, I’m not counting anything out. They would see all of this and breathe a sigh of relief. They would be proud. They may not understand things like cafes, but they would be proud that I go to them so frequently and drown myself in my imagination. They would be proud that I made something of myself. That something may not be CEO or bestselling novelist, but it’s enough. It’s all I want*.
And so, on this, my forty-third birthday, I give myself a slow clap. I did it—I kept it together, despite how hard the world (and my biology) have made it. That calls for some cake.
_________________________
* Well, that and a freaking job.
One of the advantages of having such an unusual name is that, when I hear someone say “Jeremiah,” I’m 80 percent certain they’re talking to or about me. So I’m trained to react to it like a dog reacts to its own name.
That’s why I was in a state of such high alert when the lacrosse bros were sitting behind me in the cafe, having a long, detailed conversation about their bro, Jeremiah. I was so tense and unfocused while they were there that I don’t think I wrote more than a paragraph. By the time they wrapped up, I was a wreck, relieved that they and their bro were gone.
Taking their place were a middle-aged lady and a teenage boy who, based on their conversation, were a church youth leader and a church youth. They talked about, at length, a fellow youth named Jeremiah. Was this this same Jeremiah as bro Jeremiah? It doesn’t matter. I have a repetitive stress injury from my ears perking up every time they heard that name.
I don’t think I can adequately express the amount of anxiety that hearing my name coming from strangers causes me. That’s why I avoid wearing my name tag at work. It’s been literally years since I’ve heard my name spoken about a person who wasn’t me, so the bombardment gave me a bit of a complex. That’s why I was so relieved to go to work that evening, where people don’t ever use my name, even when they are referring to me.
Want to hear something that’s going to make some people absolutely hate me? I have full control over my sleep. I can stay up as late as I want (within reason), wake up as early as I want (though it might take one or two snooze buttons for me to roll out of bed), and—and this is the one that’s going to annoy people—go to sleep within ten minutes of closing my eyes in bed. The other night I went to bed an hour early because I wanted to wake up an hour earlier, and I was out like a light, even though I’d had two glasses of iced tea with dinner. Also, I can sleep through anything, which helps because my roommate comes home late from school and has dinner, and there’s only a curtain separating the kitchen from my pillows.
This didn’t used to be this way. I used to toss and turn for hours and rise from bed like a rotting zombie, but I changed somehow, I don’t know how, and I do not, for one minute, take this skill for granted.
For a little over a year, I’ve been lamenting the loss of my humor. One of the side effects of finding the calm and emotional stability that I needed to function in the everyday world seemed to be that I ceased to be funny. I used to make people laugh, it was one of my sources of pride. I was sorry to see it go, but I had come to accept that this was who I was now. It was one of these Doctor Who-style regenerations I’m always going off about during my birthday. People would hear tales of me telling a joke, and the person they’d be hearing about would be as foreign to them as the hard-drinking Jeremiah is to anybody who met me after 2007.
And then an interesting thing started happening. People started laughing again. It started as I was living in my parents’ place, when I’d made jokes and they went over well with Mom and Dad, but also with the long-distance friendships I was rekindling, and later, with the new roommate/long-lost friend I’d found. It really hit home when I made a comment about the menu in the pizza place that got my roommate’s friend guffawing so loudly I thought we were going to get kicked out, that maybe my humor hadn’t died, it was just resting.
Over the past two months and a week I’ve been learning to live a brand new life, but maybe it’s also giving me a chance to welcome an old one back too.
It’s hard to look back on 2018 without being blinded by that pretty momentous thing that happened at the end of the year that pretty much obscured everything else. I can say this about it though, on December 13, I had exactly one friend I thought I could count on, but in the following weeks, I had dozens. And not for nothing, I was able to reunite with my former best friend who I’d been forced to remove from my life when she and Kate became enemies. I have yet to get back on my feet, but the past two weeks have been relaxing and uplifting in a way that shouldn’t be the case for someone who went through what I went through.
As for the rest of the year, I finished five novels, I did a thing on Amazon you’re about to find out about a little later, I spent Christmas with my parents for the first time since I was in college, I saw glaciers, I worked at a job that I actually kind of liked and really started to warm up to my coworkers, I had a conversation with my estranged sister. It’s a pretty short list because all I really did with my time in 2018 was go to work and write. And I was content doing just that. It was a quiet, productive life, and I really liked it. And I’d still be doing that today had circumstances not happened the way they had.
2019 is going to be a really big year for me, and I thank you, with all of my heart, for being here as it happens.
Yesterday, at the beginning of what I assumed was a routine marriage counseling session, Kate handed me divorce papers and a folder filled with everything I needed to do in the next few days to extricate myself from her life, as well as a letter in which she asked me not to contact her again, and then she walked away, leaving me with two-and-a-half days to clear out the condo so she can move into it without me while she stayed with friends. To say this was a surprise is an understatement. When I went into that session, I was fully prepared to brag about how well I thought things were going.
So, yeah, I had no clue this was going to happen. Actually, that’s not true. I had several clues, like the way she asked me how to do the things that are typically my job to do in the house—like medicating the cats. I asked her why, and she gave me some nice answers that didn’t include impending divorce. So, I thought, don’t be ridiculous. Kate would never dump you in secret like that. She trusts you. She would talk to you. Evidently not because here I am, kicked out of my home, away from my best friend of fourteen years, having my cats snatched from me, being forced to quit my job and live with my parents.
The fact is, Kate and I have been living separate lives for a while now. She has work, work-related travel, CrossFit, being an organizational member of three pagan groups, and close friends she loves to spend time with. I write a lot of novels and work every weekend. We only ever saw each other a few hours a week. But I honestly thought this would just be a chapter in our story (the one in which we find personal enrichment apart and then come back together).
I’m not going to contest anything. Financially she’s always held us up, and otherwise, she had long ago made up her mind to systematically eliminate me from her life, so there’s no changing her opinion.
I’ll be spending my last days in my home doing the things I need to so to start a new life, packing up, and spending time with the cats, especially Andrew, whose last days I’d always assumed I’d be here for.
I’m angry, hurt, confused, and overwhelmed. We’ll see how I do as the days go on.
Jeremiah Murphy 