Appropriate Apparitions

I felt it most appropriate that i blog this morning since this will be, thus far, the biggest day in the divorce debacle  (excluding the day i heard the words come out of his mouth as i was driving 80 mph down the interstate.)  Today is our mediation.  In our judicial circuit, a couple must attend a formal mediation within the court before being allowed to go before a judge for a final hearing.  So my attorney (my boss) and I will go to the courthouse today at 10:30 a.m. We will (hopefully as I have requested) be in a separate room from the STBX and his attorney. (I felt early on that if I had to be in the same room as him, I would probably have the urge to slit his throat...honestly there is NO way I could keep my cool. I know this.) The mediator will go into each room, trying to get a feel for what each of us is thinking and then go back and forth trying to come to some sort of compromise. I have already bet my boss $5 that it will be over by noon, with nothing accomplished and we'll goto court on February 10th, just in time for Valentines Day, which, there again, does not bother me cause he wasn't so great with the holidays. I will admit, I got up early...I used my sephora make up kit. I washed and dried my hair, even used mousse (not in that order, of course). I took extra care picking out my outfit. I decided to go with a low cut black shirt, dark jeans and heels. I may not even see him. Most likely, actually, that I won't. But in the rare instance, that i might.... i had to look my best.  No, i don't want him back. No i honestly don't care, at the core, what he thinks. But you never ever ever ever EVER...want your ex to see you and think "OH! That's why we're not together!!!!"  I don't even want him to see me and wish he was with me. I just want him to see me and know that I have moved on, for the most part. Any mourning at this point is for marriage itself. Mourning the loss of a mate, a companion, someone i trusted and loved. That person left long ago and the man I may see this morning has nothing to do with any of that.  He is a shell of a man.  He is hollow inside, nothing to him that has anything to do with me. Every part of me and who i was when I was with him is gone. I am a better person for it. So if and when I see him, I will try my best to remember, that when it takes my breath away, it won't be THAT man. It will be the memory of the man I married, a ghost if you will......Not the man that loved me, not the man that promised me forever. Not the man who thought it was cute when I cried at movies and laughed when i had one of my infamous "cassisms" (like, when i realized that skyscrapers were called that because they were so tall they "scraped the sky"...THAT, my friends, is a Cassism.) That man died years ago. It is the apparition of that man that i dread seeing. But if and when I do,  I will know that I am who I am because I lived it and I lived through it. And nothing he can say or do to me now will ever take that away. The sight of him might take my breath, but that will return in an instant, and I'll keep walking, right past him, head held high, right out of his life forever. Just as it should be. Just the way he wanted it. Perhaps i should even stop and thank him. My life now is so much more than I ever imagined it could be. Thanks to his cowardice, his inept inability to adjust to society, his heartlessness and his blatant disregard for my heart and my feelings. I should thank him for making me realize the person i could and SHOULD be.  I am a better person for having survived the past decade with him. And I will, each day, become an even more amazing person, for surviving decades without him. . . .