I am divorced. What more is there to say? A lot, as it happens. But knowing where to begin is difficult to ascertain. Do I begin at the beginning? Or at the end? Or at the post-end, with all of the drama that has ensued since the divorce was finalized a little over a month ago? I am not sure.

What I know is that when I began writing this post, with my kids asleep in the other room, I immediately began to feel tightness in my left shoulder. Tension always begins there, and if the stress and anxiety increase, it spreads to my right shoulder. If it gets even worse, my hands start to shake.

I could say that the divorce has left me bruised and traumatized, but this is not entirely accurate. My marriage left me bruised and traumatized. I was married to an abusive woman. Over the course of thirteen years, the level of abuse slowly increased until I could no longer remain in my marriage. There is so much more to say, and I hope to say it, unless at some point I decided to think better of this entire blog endeavor. But even if I do—and there is so much more to say—I hope to somehow regain my voice.

I am pressed by the conviction that many, many people out there, former “friends,” friends from church, friends from school, friends from the neighborhood, believe that I am an adulterous bastard who left my wife for another woman. It is a simple story and easily accepted. The story rings true to many. After all, is this not the way of the world? Doesn’t this sort of thing happen all the time? So I write, but feel myself pressed against a multitude of doubters who lend no credence to my voice. These are the people who greet my children after school when they walk past, yet ignore me. They are the ones who would rather not see me, but I inconveniently fail to disappear.

The story of adultery and betrayal is not true. Pilate asks at Jesus’s trial, “What is truth?” The truth of my marriage has a hidden complexity. It is a woven tapestry of black yarns contrasted with even blacker yarns interspersed occasionally with light and delightful hues of joy dyed black by words. My marriage is a tapestry of black.

This is the story of that blackness. There will be very little to enjoy.