Never Have I Ever

My life now is like one long, drawn-out game of Never Have I Ever, and I am getting wasted.  Never have I ever paid property taxes on a condo I own free and clear.  Never have I ever gone an entire week without shutting the bathroom door.  Never have I ever received payment just for being married once.  Never have I ever left my spouse.  Never have I ever had my heart broken so thoroughly and so well that I had to grow an entirely new one in its place.  Never have I ever given up on a marriage.

It is that last one which still rankles, and will until the end of days. Never have I ever given up.  I got indifferent.  I took for granted.  I hid and stayed silent, but I did not give up.  Now, when it would be in my best interest to give up, I'm not sure how.  I know how to look like it, but the doing of it is difficult.  Never have I ever.

Two weeks post decree, I felt like a half-finished puzzle where the table got shaken and overturned.  I thought a picture was emerging and I had everything at least organized.  Blue with blue. Red with red.  Yellow with yellow.  But it wasn't organized and there was that same helpless, irrational rage you feel when you're 5 years old and all your toys are gone for no reason.  I didn't understand why everything was different all of the sudden.  I had been preparing for months.  I was ready.  Who the fuck turned over the table in the middle of the night? And changed out all the pieces? And took the picture away?

And this, I realize, is where I am really Mapless.  It's not my relationship with him, it's my relationship with myself.  Never have I ever lived completely on my own as an adult, and that's the truth.  I look at my profiles on dating sites and wonder who it is I am writing about.  Some woman half in and half out of a door.  I can identify part of her as me, but the rest is obscured.

Meanwhile, I am slowly ticking off milestones in my ongoing game of Never Have I Ever.  I hope that I am the one of us having the most outrageous sex.  Because never have I ever been curious and unashamed . . .