[Hello, all. I've been dating, and trying to put this whole "divorce thing" behind me. Turns out, that's not so easily done. And so I return to this saga in the hope that I will cast out these remaining demons. Bear with me, Dear Readers.]
As you know if you have read, like, any of this blog (including the title), Facebook has been a constant presence in this story. Before, during, and after the divorce, Facebook became the pivot point for many of the interesting twists and turns.
There is one particular knife twist, which is what happened when Facebook changed some of its settings, and how information was displayed to your Facebook friends. This was roughly, oh, October of 2009. We suddenly went from simple status updates to things called "news feeds." News feeds contained information about things you'd recently done. "Penelope B. is now friends with Jackie O." That sort of thing. It was magical. (Not really, but then again I've never really understood why Facebook feels the need to tinker. Alas, I am no Zuckerberg.)
In November of 2009, during the week of the big "Don Jeremy Fake Facebook Account and Ensuing Discovery of the Affair" affair, I suddenly decided I was going to change my relationship status, and fuck all to D if he noticed. Well, he didn't.
Unfortunately, many, many of my relatives did. Because now, the "News Feed" (and - this was certainly news) read:
"Penelope B. is now single." [heart]
Did I know this at the time? Nope. The way I discovered this was when my mother called me to ask why my cousin had just called my aunt, with the question, "Is Penelope getting a divorce?" This question, unfortunately, came as a great surprise to my aunt. Which, by the way, came as a great surprise to me, since my mom had told me she would take care of telling her sister (said aunt). Long story short, yeah, that hadn't happened.
But Facebook's news feeds sure did! Oh boy, did they ever. And so this is how most of my extended family - the very people whose opinions of this entire matter mattered most - found out that I was getting a divorce.
By a fucking Facebook news feed. Oh, Facebook. You are a fickle bitch. While I quickly deleted the post once I knew it existed, the damage had been done. A couple dozen of my most important family members had found out about my divorce from a news feed. [Give me a moment here to, again, hang my head in shame.]
I knew them all well enough to know that they'd forgive me for it. What they'd have a harder time with was trying to figure out what the hell was going on with me. And these folks were all waiting for me - all 50 or 60 of them, at one big, giant party - in upstate New York. As we made our way up the coast, I became more and more agitated. The text message from Mr. Anonymous had reminded me that, even thousands of miles away, I was still beholden to the reality that I had divorced my husband. And this, Dear Readers, was something that just simply isn't. Done. In. My. Family.
So, we drove. Little One was a dream, my mother was understanding. I was simply panicked.
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