The definitive moment was a text message that read, "I don't think we should be together" while I was visiting my parents for Mother's Day. But the moment I knew was before that. Just as the guillotine blade hitting your neck isn't the moment you discover things are going badly...being strapped into the machine while French peasants cheer is a good indication you could have made better decisions as to how and when to advise people about their cake eating habits.
The actual moment involved song lyrics listened to in tense silence in a car, but of course, it wasn't just that one moment--it was quite a few moments leading up to that one moment. The first event was small... I finished the video game Max Payne Two, right after Max Payne One, and Painkiller...and Diablo 2...and Iron Cross...and Starcraft 2...and some kind of Pac Man knockoff. It was then I thought to myself, "I am playing way more video games than I usually do...what normally fills that space? Oh right...conversation."
The next part involved Venice beach and the drum circle. Yes. The drum circle.
To be thoroughly transparent, the drum circle is only something I consider in hindsight. At the time, I couldn't imagine finding a threat in such a group of stunted adolescents, sage-burning foreign grad students on expired Visas, and the professionally bad smelling. Yet somewhere amidst the tuneless bongo pounding was our marriage Waterloo. Waterloo may be too grand... it was more like the Alamo: The battle was one sided and the Americans lost.
One day we visited the beach and she asked me to buy her a djembe drum. It's one of those instruments you thump a few times imagining a truly liberating primal musical experience only to realize a few weeks later it's become the world's crappiest looking end table. The day she left for the drum circle without said crappy end table should have been a pretty clear sign other skins were getting hit, but if I ever asked her a suspicious question, she'd bounce it back on me. She was my wife, I was supposed to trust her. So I asked no more about the drum circle.
Then there was the day she picked me up from the airport and I could tell something wasn't right...When I got in the car she was on the phone talking to someone only in subtext. I didn't even know that was possible. It was like fire without smoke or thunder without lightning. I was the third wheel and I was the only other person there.
I was pretty uncomfortable but I wasn't sure why...Then came the actual "moment I knew." A song by one of my favorite artists, Brendan Benson, came on. For those of you who don't know who Brendan Benson is, he was supposed to be the big star of the Detroit music scene...then Jack White showed up and turned him into a Motor City Sallieri. Fitting I would get my divorce epiphany by another also-ran. Anyway, it was like nothing I had felt before, it was an unspoken dialogue between us. We attached ourselves to the lyrics and they formed a conversation that had gone unsaid until that point... Me first - Cold hands, warm heart, we just need some time apart and everything will be okay. Old habits young ways, maybe we're just in a phase.
Then it was her turn to feel the lyrics - Well I hate to say it but it's obvious... I'm telling you girl there's no future for us. We've got to end it before it's too late, the love that is left turns quickly to hate.
Naturally in this exchange, I got to be the girl.
The next song was Ozzy Osborne. He had nothing to say about our relationship. And in the end, neither did we.