Minutes after we'd been declared husband and ex-wife, Edgar was vigorously berating me, calling me a dumb, stupid woman. I looked up at him and wept.

"I'm giving you what you wanted," he said. "I kept my mouth shut."

I kept crying and trying not to think about the other people in the waiting area. They probably appreciated the entertainment.

It was my turn to keep quiet. I recognized Ed's fury as the typical reaction of alcoholics and addicts when something doesn't go their way: It has to be somebody else's fault. Ed was right, I'd gotten what I wanted. There was no need to remind him of how and why, with the destructive assistance of alcohol, we'd ended up in divorce court.

My ex actually, accidentally, did me some favors as our marriage came to an end. Over a year ago, he was the one who angrily asked if I wanted a divorce, never expecting me to say yes. Had he not asked, I'd probably still be working up the courage to say so.

On the day of the final hearing, he reminded me that he is prone to untruthfulness and to blaming others for his problems.

I felt really bad when I told the judge our marriage was irretrievably broken. Though I'd been over that question and over it and over it countless times, always finding the answer was yes, still I had a small doubt at the moment of truth.

It wasn't big enough to stop me, though.

I never thought I'd get divorced. I meant that business about taking Ed for the rest of my days. When I realized, though, that my days would be fewer if I stayed married to a man who couldn't quit drinking, I was able to break my promise.

I'm sad about it, but I'm not sorry about it.
 

A week or two after I filed the papers for my uncontested divorce, I received notification of the date of my final hearing. This week! Whoa.

The instructions I got at the courthouse said it'd be three to eight weeks before the letter arrived. I was up in North Carolina, trying to get settled in my new place. Suddenly I had to scurry back to Florida.

That meant a long car trip, which gave me plenty of time for rumination. So I went over my situation again.

When I was an active alcoholic, I fell in love with and married and active alcoholic. We both got worse over the following several years until two things happened: I became convinced I needed to quit drinking and I lost hope that my husband, Edgar, would stop.

One of the hardest things I ever did was pitch him out of the house we shared. After that, a year went by, during which I stayed sober and Ed continued his pattern of falling off the wagon and jumping on, falling off and jumping back on... 

I became confident that my decision to divorce was the right one. Watching Ed kill himself on the installment plan would probably kill me, as I might resume drinking in an attempt to cope with it.

It was the right decision, but not a comfortable one. I'm not divorcing Ed because I don't love him. We had some good times together, too; smart conversation, lots of laughs, the best road trips I've ever taken. We weren't able to have children, but we opened our home to countless animals, some of which are still with me.

I guess my marriage was like everybody else's — some good, some bad. Like many other spouses, I decided to pull the plug when the bad overwhelmed the good.

Would I marry Ed all over again? Knowing what I know now, of course not. But I'm not sorry I did it that one time, nor am I sorry to be divorcing him, however sad I may be.