“Congratulations,” I said, really focused on meaning it.

“Come up here and claim your reward,” the nurses said.

Hillary ran to the gong and pulled the mallet from the nurse’s hand.

“I’ve never done this before,” she said.

“Hit it like you mean it,” the nurse said.

“I’m six weeks along,” she said.

“It won’t hurt the baby to celebrate your achievement,” the nurse said, hand on her shoulder.

“More to celebrate,” the other nurse added.

Hillary slammed the mallet into the gong so hard that it nearly knocked her backward.

“I could feel it in my teeth,” she said. “I hope my baby couldn’t feel the jolt.”

“It can’t feel anything,” I said.

I woke up with a start, my heart racing. I didn’t want to be the kind of person who didn’t want others to make it.

21.

When you are alone, there is suddenly so much more time to fill. In my first month alone, I looked for ways to structure my time while trying to avoid people—friends, or anyone—who would potentially ask me how Bobby was doing. I let Bobby stick to the meet-and-greets, knowing it meant that he would probably win most of our friends in the divorce. That’s what happens when you get to lead how the story gets told. My absence—and silence—meant that I was probably hiding something.

Or that I had some sense of shame about it. I only felt ashamed at feeling liberated for the first time in a long time. I had left behind persistent despair. But no one says a sense of liberation is an okay feeling to have when you leave a marriage. I thought about how it would look to take vacation photos, alone or with friends, looking visibly happy, and how people would react to not seeing me laid out on the floor. Or if people would judge me for not being destroyed by my choice. I wondered how long I was supposed to perform some kind of grief to adequately convey to others how much I cared about my marriage. More important, why did I have to carry other people’s feelings about the end of my marriage?

I had cared about my marriage and I felt a sense of relief.

Not wanting to carry the burden of other people’s feelings about what I had done naturally made me feel like a piece of shit. I had made a choice that caused an unwelcome shift in the lives of those around us, people who were expecting grandchildren, or at least well-rounded family get-togethers.

What was interesting is that women I only knew in the most minor way started e-mailing me asking for drink dates, and confiding in their e-mails that they, too, were unhappy in their marriages. They wanted to feel out if leaving was worth it, so they wanted to get together and discuss what being single was like.