NOTE: As I mentally deconstruct the demise of my marriage, I am publishing a series of short essays about things that happened, the way I felt, and so on. It's intended to illustrate my mental state at the time, and provide a kind of chronicle of my emotional state, hopefully helping me not make the same mistakes in future relationships.

5/10/03 1:05 PM: I'm starting to have a problem with burgundy Toyota Corollas.

Every time I see one in traffic, my eyes leap to the license place, looking for the familiar first four characters. My soon-to-be-ex-wife Yuri's car. I memorized four-sevenths of her license place on our third date, and I'll probably remember them for the rest of my life. Then, as I read the plate, I wonder what I would do if it were her car. What could I say? It makes driving a little less enjoyable an experience.

There really seem to be a lot of these cars around, and I'm often getting false positive identifications in my brain on other Asian sedans (older Corollas, Maximas, et cetera).

I was at work this past weekend, and I got a press release that said Brother J from X-Clan would be performing at Leimert Park the following week. My hand reached for the phone, but I pulled it back. First of all, Yuri wasn't at home, she was driving around the state, desperate to get away from me and the house we still shared. Second of all, she wasn't available for me to share things like that with anymore, the idea of opening up and experiencing things like that with her was a construct of the past tense. Yuri and I are among the world's biggest X-Clan fans, can rattle off verse after verse of Brother J's brash baritone belligerence with only a second's prompting. Now, whenever an X-Clan song comes up on my iPod, I jab at the fast forward button like I had an electrical shock.

A few minutes later, I opened an invitation to Mel Brooks The Producers at the Pantages. That familiar pang ricocheted inside my rib cage, since there's nobody in the whole world I would think of going to a play with, other than Yuri.

So much of my life is colored in terms of how things relate to Yuri. I rush to get home from Golden Bird, so the fries are still warm the way she likes them. Norman Houston Park on La Brea and Stocker still echoes with the sound of us playing frisbee. Every week, I walk past Strangers in Paradise and Meridian in the comic book store and remember. The very concept of gymnastics is sandwiched between photos of her as a juvenile competitor and her stern visage, coaching tomorrow's high fliers. Movies like Noises Off, Amelie, Once Were Warriors ... all inextricably tied up in the idea of Yuri.

Now I'm trying to discover a world that doesn't include her, a life without her, my brain trying to reject the intellectual graft like a heart transplant being attacked by white blood cells and antibodies. Boggling as every TV show I watch has couples breaking up, reeling as every song sounds like it's transmitting directly from my broken heart. In the words of George Michael, "my memory serves me all to well."