Year of the Boar

I am prone to marital strife.

I've known this since I was 8, when I went to the Chinese restaurant with my family and saw that decree printed on my placemat. Born in 1971, the Year of the Boar, I am noble and chivalrous, my friends will be lifelong, and I am prone to marital strife. It shocked me to read that, when I had such an idealized view of marriage and such a sense of expectant entitlement to wedded bliss. It hadn't occurred to me before that day that my life could be otherwise, and I remember with visceral clarity the feeling in my chest as I read my fortune aloud. It was as if my ribcage collapsed, burying my heart and lungs under the rubble of bone.

My family, which at the time had not fully descended into the madness that would follow, laughed indulgently at my concern, and assured me that fortunes found on paper placemats weren't sureties, and I could have a happy life and marriage if I wanted to. I was somewhat soothed by their certainty, and I ate my Snow White Chicken and poked my siblings with chopsticks and made polite conversation with my grandparents. But as I aged, that sentence stuck with me, worried me every time I saw the prediction on placemats, and I would read the sentence over and over as I slurped egg drop soup from a flat bottomed spoon. My family took their grim pleasure in my fears, and eventually my fortune became an accusation, hurled up the stairs after my stomping teenage fury, my father leaning on the banister and craning his neck to shout, "You are are prone to marital strife! You are prone to marital strife!"

Which is true. I am prone to marital strife - I filed for divorce yesterday. It took me exactly 5 minutes to read and sign my petition - five minutes to begin to undo my public and sacred vows. But the end, as all ends do, started long ago, before even "I do." The reasons are convoluted and tedious and so I will just give you the official party line: We are headed in different directions, we are better off as friends, it just wasn't right between us. Our incompatability had nothing to do with the Year of the Boar, nothing to do with my fear of my fortune's accuracy, nothing to do with the predictions reverberating up the stairs. I am prone to marital strife because I married someone I didn't love, because I didn't pay attention, because I was looking for something I thought I could find on the other side of the broom.

Pulling away from my lawyer's office, I felt like I was driving too fast around a sharp curve, as if I needed to slow down and buckle up before I lost control. My husband moved out a year ago, we agreed to get divorced six months before that, I've known I made a mistake since the honeymoon, and yet it all seemed to be happening way too fast. Ending is hard, defeat is hard, admitting that I cannot fix this marriage by sheer force of will is hard. I hate to be wrong, and I was wrong in front of 200 of my family and friends. I didn't doubt for a moment my decision to get divorced, but the reality of the severance was wrenching.

But even among the sorrow and wilderness and longing of this failure, I can feel my chest reinflating. My dismal fortune has come to pass, and I am free to find other fortunes. I the petitioner feel myself escaping my marital strife.