Marriage is like a tangled ball of thread

My ties to ex are slowly breaking. I see, or feel it, now. Our relationship was like a huge, hopeless ball of tangled thread, the kind you leave in the bottom of the sewing basket thinking that someday you'll tackle it when you have the patience and time and a good magnifying glass so you leave it there where, miraculously unassisted, it continues to grow and gather lint fluff and stray buttons and pins.

I am slowly pulling our tangled nightmare apart. The difficult thing is that I have to examine every knot before I can untangle them: that was my part, that was his part, that was my part, ok, done. Of course, the threads are never the same; they're all wrinkly and twisted and will never wind up smoothly.

After more than a year, I am starting to see us as two separate, messy piles and not one big one. Yes I can imagine living without him for the rest of my life. (Not that it isn't still weird.) But everything I do -- go to reading, visit a museum, buy a pair of shoes -- isn't accompanied with a jealous take that! you bastard. Sometimes I do things and don't even think of him at all. Progress, not perfection.