Ok, so I've a plan to start writing a little bit each day, or each week.  Some of this stuff may seem like nonsense, some of it may be comical, some of it may seem serious, but none of that matters.  If something I write helps a reader in some far corner of the world, that is wonderful.  But honestly, this endeavor hardly aspires to such heights.  I just want to sift through some of the BS in my head, because that BS has filtered into my life now for years and I don't always like the results.

Take for example, my marriage to an Egyptian foreign national last fall.  It was so much easier getting into that mistake than it has been getting out of it.  But the stuff that goes on in my head is what got me there, and I'll be damned if I make that mistake again.  People are not always who they present themselves to be.  Correction:  People are rarely who they present themselves to be.  Advice to the cautious:  find out who someone really is before you marry them.  If you have doubts, talk to someone, preferably a professional.  If he is nice to you, but isn't nice to the waiter, or the taxi driver, or the penniless vagrant who happens to catch his eye, chances are he's an asshole.  And you're next. Conversely, if he's nice to the waiter, the taxi driver, and the penniless vagrant, but he isn't nice to you, he's still an asshole.  If his mother has waited hand and foot on him and systematically put his needs before her own for the better part of his life, you're next.  So if you're like me, don't just look before you jump.  Take a few steps back first, like, in the form of a few years.  Cuz seriously, divorce is a major pain in the ass, even if you can prove that he entered into the marriage solely for citizenship.

Sometimes I wonder about places that still arrange marriages, and I think how much simpler that would be.  But don't fool yourself, arranged marriages require a certain mindset, a cultural backdrop, that we just don't have anymore in the States.  I've been friends with boys since I was a child, dated several, loved a few.  After that, arranged marriage just doesn't work.  I want a husband that respects me as his equal, loves me as his friend, wants me as his partner and wife.  Am I asking too much?  The not-so-quack therapist offers a resounding "NO".

Today though, on my way to the courthouse, I started to think really hard about the situation.  This whole divorce thing is really overwhelming.  I find that I resent him more and more for doing his best to make this difficult for me.  So I started wondering about that.  God works in mysterious ways.  So if this man is presenting me with a challenge, a road block, it is because somehow, in some way, I have road blocked myself.  In some way, i have created in my life an impasse, and the real task for me here, is to carefully deconstruct the mental and emotional barricades that for years I have used to protect myself.  And when I look at it that way, I cry, and I pray, and I give thanks to a God that never burdens His children with more than they can bear.  Keep my feet on the straight path to You, and I will do my best to help someone along the way.

Miguel Ruiz, author of "The Four Agreements", writes in one of his books about the mental agreements we form as children that shape the way we believe, the way we see and relate to the world.  So apparently, I made some agreements about our male counterparts that just don't jive with me anymore.  And I'm on the road to change that, and to change me, and to hopefully help bring a little more light into an otherwise shady world.

Life lessons to reflect on:

It's easy to be nice to someone that holds a key to something you want.

Ask questions.  Demand answers.  Settle for nothing short of transparency.

When life seems difficult or hopeless, look around you for someone who is also faced with a difficult or seemingly hopeless situation(even if it looks nothing like yours), and do something to help relieve that, if only for a brief moment.
--"When we hurt one person, it is as if we hurt all of humanity.  When we help one person, it is as if we help all of humanity." (adapted from the Holy Qur'an)
--Err on the side of light.