Officially Divorced!

It finally happened!

On a cold, Saturday morning in late November, I received news that my divorce was official!

Here’s how it went down:

My mom’s phone starts ringing.

It’s my aunt from Iran.

No, not an actual Telegram because we’re Middle Eastern – a communication App similar to Whatsapp used by Iranians all over the world to spam each other with diets, good thoughts, old videos of our king and queen, jokes, vacation photos and hundreds of thousands of group chats with different friends and family members. It’s basically a torture device for people like me who can still read and write in Farsi, but don’t have enough minutes in a day to keep up with the millions of messages announcing pregnancies, birthday wishes, weddings, divorces, and other trivial things. Anyway, I had to get rid of mine when I got a job.

My mom hangs up and quickly opens her App. We both kinda know what this is about – she brings up the message and it’s an upside-down photo of my Iranian birth certificate. My mom’s not wearing her glasses, and I’m not quite sure what I’m looking at. She keeps stretching the photo, zooming in and out on different parts, while I peek over her shoulder and occasionally touch the screen to show I’m helping. Then, simultaneously, we both see the word “DIVORCED” written in Farsi.

We scream. And hug. And she congratulates me. I get flashbacks to when I first got my period. I’m a little weird-ed out by it and momentarily get a cramp-like, gut-wrenching pain in my stomach. And then it goes away and I feel free!

We immediately call back my aunt to thank her for everything she’s done.

Having been on a social media cleanse for like 5 minutes (4 days), I immediately felt like I had to let the world know about this: I have a following! People who are rooting for me! I need to tell my fans, and friends and family. After-all they were there for me, watching my Instagram stories when my files got rejected, saw me get stabbed by a needle to prove I wasn’t pregnant and running away with his child (I captioned this one: ‘the last prick for the last prick‘ – clever eh?), and everyone else who personally felt invested in my story (both on IG and in real life).

“Officially Divorced” I yelled at the top of my keyboard. Proud and free like the little bird tattoo on my right shoulder.

The “Congrats” messages followed by “How do you feel?” poured into my DM’s.

The first one was so easy to answer “THANK YOU!”, the second one… “uh…”

I wasn’t sure how I felt, and I tried desperately to analyze it: why don’t I feel pure joy? Am I subconsciously mourning the 5 years of my life that was wasted in my marriage? Am I afraid of settling for less again? What if I never fall in love? What if I become one of those people that’s been divorced multiple times?? Will I ever be as thin as I was on my wedding day? Am I super-aware of the fact that I’m thirty years old, single, and child-less? Will I ever have it all? Does anyone? Can I adopt a child if I move and get a promotion? Am I terrified of what’s next? Is “separated” a nicer word to use than “divorced”?

Maybe.

Or maybe it had been so long since I’d been separated that it didn’t matter. Maybe I had found my place back in society. Maybe the process of divorce was so tedious, lame, long and expensive that I was done caring. Maybe I already had all the things that truly mattered: a dating blog and a fan-base! Maybe I had moved on in so many different ways and had grown so much that I didn’t need a piece of paper to validate my freedom, because I had earned it!