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.

11/4/03 4:35 AM: Last Monday night the phone rang.

The phone rings a lot, and most of the time I don't care. After telemarketing from age 15 to age 21, I have extremely little interest in phones, or what anybody on one can say to me. If it's that bloody important, I reason, they'll send me an email or attach a note to a check, the only two sure fire ways to get my attention.

Nonetheless, the phone was ringing and the caller ID noted a 323 number I'd never seen before. I had a few minutes to kill before I planned to head out to Liquid Kitty and do some last-minute warm ups for a karaoke contest the next night. So I picked it up.

It was Yuri.

Somehow, this didn't bother me. I had the feeling it would have bugged me shortly before, but in that moment it was merely a fact, like the fact Boomtown got cancelled or the fact that my rent is $650 a month. So there I was on the phone with Yuri.

Due to an agreement created to foster better communication, I can't divulge the exact specifics of our conversation, which ended up being an hour long. However, the crux of it i can share, and it ... well, it's something.

She was wrong.

I've mentioned earlier that I thought, in retrospect, that I was largely right and she was largely wrong. I also mentioned that I was wholly willing to accept that my newfound sense of righteousness could be a defense mechanism deluding me into believing what I wanted to hear.

However, her admissions said otherwise. She now admitted being wrong -- not discounting my own contributions to our fall, but considering herself as the grander culprit as she'd been doing these things longer, and in many cases precipitating and mitigating my own offenses (my interpretations of what she said, not what she said, again, I stick to my agreements).

I spent most of that hour-long phone conversation laughing like a mad bastard. After all the long nights of doubt and sorrow, I felt like -- cliche be damned -- a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders, like a heavy yoke. I was dumfounded, stuck and stunned in disbelief, intellectually challenged by the sheer volume of stunning revelations I was being told.

She. Was. Wrong.

More dangerous than that was the fact that I really was right most of the way. I'd done virtually everything I could. Loved her the best way I knew how. Poured myself into our marriage with a devotion that bordered on the fanatical.

To no avail.

That I could do so much right, that I could do the best I could, and it still wasn't enough. Because the woman I selected -- who, up until the day she left, I considered the most together, smartest woman I'd ever met -- was wholly, incontrovertibly wrong for me.

My judgement was -- at best -- spotty. My decision making process, as far as the women I was attracted to, vastly suspect. Yay, I was right, but oh dear god, what a pyrrhic victory it turned out to be.

On a good side, the shadow of Yuri that hung over my new life, on the other side of divorce. In the words of Creed, "I'm free, I'm careless," yet I still can't believe. My belief has no foundation, floating freely and existing without the ability to connect me to anything. On a bad side, I now look at every woman who smiles back with suspicion, I now have no faith in the idea that I can do my best and it'll be enough, I am without any belief that any woman can stand the rain and be with me through bad times that inevitably come.

She was wrong. I was right. For all the good it'll do me.