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wanted to win and that he would pay a premium to get the car. I would have loved to get it, but I couldn’t afford to lose that money out of our settlement. I had no income and decided that I needed to let it go, but Eddie didn’t have to know that. So, I decided to try to milk some money out of the bastard. With my pen, I pretended to write a large, long figure on my piece of paper. I noticed Eddie doing the same. We both pushed our papers to the middle of the table, and our lawyers flipped them around. Eddie was willing to pay $65,000. I was willing to pay $1. Eddie pretended that he didn’t care that I just screwed him out of $65,000, but I knew it royally pissed him off. What could be sweeter? I got paid a whole lot of money to irritate my ex-husband.
    But in the same vein, did I want half of his fancy tools? You bet your ass. Did I try to snake half of his watch collection? Obviously. But Eddie was smart—smarter than he looks, anyway. I remember watching him carry the watch case filled with his extravagant watch collection (including three Rolexes, three Panerais, two Franck Mullers, and a Cartier that I had given him, totaling well over $100,000) out of the house the very day news of his affair had come out, along with many of theexpensive electronics. This was the love of my life and our marriage was over, so naturally that sent me into a tailspin. It was clear to me then that this was going to get ugly.
    Luckily, I was able to keep my wedding rings: a three-carat, prong-set wedding band and my four-and-a-quarter-carat, princess-cut, center-stone engagement ring. Today it’s probably worth upward of $70,000 and could probably have saved me a lot of financial hardship in the beginning had I decided to sell it, but I just couldn’t. Instead, I locked the ring away in a safe-deposit box, so that one day my Mason or Jake can have it. People often ask me if I think it would be bad luck for my son and future daughter-in-law to use a ring that was the symbol of my failed marriage. My answer? Fuck off. How could a thirteen-year relationship that brought into this world two of its most beautiful people be considered a failure or bad luck? I don’t regret being Eddie’s wife, and I don’t regret the life we built together. I just regret encouraging him to do that made-for-TV movie.
    After the division of the assets came the really fun part, the child- and spousal-support negotiations. This, the lengthiest part of the divorce, lasted over a year. Wecouldn’t agree on anything, and our lawyers seemed to encourage the fighting (which translated into more billable hours for them). I wanted full custody of my kids, but Eddie was fighting me for half. I know Eddie loves our children, but while we were married, he was never around. He just wasn’t a hands-on dad back then. I doubt he even knew how to bathe them or get them ready for bed.
    Eventually, after months and months of back-and-forth on who would get what, I backed down—as I always did with him. It just wasn’t worth it anymore, and it was draining the life out of me. I was exhausted, depressed, and drinking too much for my own good. I was in a bad place. It simply wasn’t healthy to exert this much time and energy on hate and revenge. The continued fighting was consuming me, fucking me up. I concluded that I kept fighting with him to keep him in my life in some capacity. In my head, all of our arguments came from a place of passion. I realized that I was holding on to something that wasn’t there anymore. I guess I hadn’t been ready to completely let him go. But it was finally time.
    Nearly a year and a half after I got that Wednesday-morningcall, I was free. Strangely, I don’t even remember the exact date, but it was in late September 2010. My lawyer called to tell me the papers were ready to be signed, so I drove to her office and signed them. It was surprisingly anticlimactic. Eight years of marriage became null and void with a single signature, but I