On Marriage

After fifteen years Sage and I broke up.

We started dating when I was still in college. Obama was president. That first month, the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe began. We fell hard for each other. It was very good for many years.

We had names picked out for our kids (Vincent and Faye) but pre-cervical cancer and a hysterectomy erased that timeline.

I used to think marriage was about having someone to be there when you died.

Unpublished portrait Sage shot of me.

As a legal/cultural institution I find marriage itself to be unpleasant.

You're coupling your finances, your debts, your property. None of this proved to be very beneficial for either of us, I think. Just more paperwork and entangled logistics. I can't finish my taxes without her. That sort of thing.

Self-portrait by Sage.

I think "culturally" marriage maybe meant something different back when all (western) marriages literally - more or less - meant the same thing: one man, one woman, monogamy. Sage and I were monogamous with the option to explore other types of relationships after clearing it with each other. Neither of us exercised this privilege. I find dating one person to be complex enough, thank you very much.

Having a ring on my finger felt nice. I often played with it, twirled it around. I took it off on March 14, 2025 and I still habitually reach with my thumb. My first ring was plain titanium with a bog oak interior. I experienced much duress when I lost it briefly last year. That thing was on my finger for almost ten years. My replacement was a limited edition Killswitch Engage skull ring. Very loud, very ostentatious, very metal. I loved it. Sage was my ride or die, after all. Wearing a ring made me feel wanted, possessed, needed. Like I belonged. Like I said, it was nice. It was also a very simple signal to the world: taken.

Growing up, my mother often talked about marriage in terms of "companionship" which was always a fascinating framing for me. I moved out for the first time when she was in the middle of her fourth divorce.

Sage and I shared a buddhist wedding at Blue Lotus Temple in Woodstock, Illinois. Our vows centered around non-attachment, growing together, and supporting each other's respective journey. But, sadly, somewhere along the line we stopped honoring most of those vows, each in our own ways.

It creeps up on you. People often reach for metaphors like "erosion" or "drift" or "deterioration" when describing divorces and I now see how those are quite apt. Some days it felt like I was be fighting with all my might to stop the erosion, desperately taking one handful of dirt back to the top at a time. A war against entropy itself. Other days I would just watch as part of it washed away, too tired to do anything or maybe secretly happy that at least something was changing.

She was always very good to me... except when she wasn't. And I like to think I reciprocated in kind... except when I didn’t. Tautological as it may be, that's how it was. We didn't fight a lot. But after two months apart I'm now realizing there was a low-grade discomfort that permeated everything I did. Sandpaper. Dissonance. Anxiety. We are both "midwest nice" so it was all very passive-aggressive. Subtle and barely noticable after so many years of repeating the same patterns. Despite that, we shared a lot of affection and love and kindness. But no quantity of that stuff can cancel out the effects of what the state of California calls "irreconcilable differences."

Molly, me, Sage, & Teresa. 2010.

Our partnership was a garden sown during the apocalypse. Wild flowers grew everywhere. For a long time their passionate roots held all the soil in place and kept things beautiful and true. But extreme times called for extreme geo-engineering: a task neither of us was quite equipped to handle.

Cringe Christmas Card, 2017

I think it was the pandemic that first sundered our kingdom beyond recognition. It affected each of us differently and in not fully compatible ways. My half of it is sad and well chronicled. Her half is her story to tell.

There were some particularly insidious second-order effects. Chain reactions of dysfunction. I did my fucking best. I take responsibility for my half. I said things that were unkind, did things out of anger I wish I hadn't. Not regrets, exactly, but not things I'm proud of either.

I poured my heart into making a mixtape for her - a little sentimental coda for our time together.

Divorce has a stigma around it in the west: failure, shame, embarrassment. People bottle it up and don't talk about it. Nonsense, in my opinion. I don't feel any of these things. Part of my healing process has been to talk about it. To let others know whats going on. This very post.

I still love Sage. After so much time together to believe anything less would be an exercise in self-deception. She has an enormous heart and a beautiful soul. The decision to end it was entirely mine. For me, extrapolating our timelines, lifestyles, interests, and goals left an increasingly tiny sliver of "success states" with each day. It's folk wisdom that marriage has ups and downs and you've just gotta ride it out. But after some number of years of downs... you also just have to know when to call it. So I did.

Probably our our last selfie, taken at our last anniversary date (a BDSM class) circa Halloween 2024.

The actual break up took less than a minute.

I had my bags packed and walked out the door, a one-way ticket to Chicago loaded up on my phone. At first, my departure was to give Sage some distance to process things. But as I was couch surfing with chosen family and an unknown return date, it became clear I was conducting a deeply personal re-connective rite. I spent so much time with so many people. The outpouring of love and support was overwhelming. Rachel aka Octabat gave me the most beautiful tattoos:

My new neck piece. I needed commensurate physical scarring to match the emotional scarring.

Glenn and I had many Manhattans in his hot tub. Meghan and I smoked indica and giggled into the wee hours of the night. 𝔡𝔞𝔲𝔫𝔱𝔩𝔢𝔰𝔰 𝔠𝔥𝔬𝔦𝔯 had its first meetup. The Crystal Lake crew got back together at Dukes, just like the good old times. I spent a weekend with my father in a cabin. I did art therapy with my mom. My sibling and I grew closer than ever. My job allows me to work from mostly anywhere (more on that later) and my squad there was extremely accommodating to my divergent hours. I am so full of love and gratitude I can hardly contain it.

I've been working on this post on and off for weeks and think it's time to publish it. There are still many months of legalities and logistics ahead of us. So far it has been amicable. For now, it looks like I'll be staying in southern California through October. Then it's back to Chicago. Back to Logan Square. Back to the Blue Line and shitty winters and increasingly humid summers and the world's largest freshwater lake and Italian beefs and the Lords of the Pit and all the people and storylines I so violently severed when the pandemic forced my exodus.

My first choice was San Francisco. Somewhere close but new. I have so many friends there, too. But after visiting a couple times and looking at rent prices (and not wanting to be immersed in Silicon Valley culture) I decided to rethink my future.

My second choice was New York City, to be by Circular Ruin DSP, my music side-hustle.

But my current employer wouldn't allow it. A very strange component of remote work in the States in 2025 is that most companies are only registered to do business in a handful of states. Ergo, employees can only legally reside in said handful of states because that determines where your taxes go. I find the whole thing oppressive and coercive, but that's the world we live in.

This morning I'm feeling pretty down. Despite my grumpy mood today the process has been overwhelmingly positive. I've made sure to spend plenty of time with friends and get out of the house and exercise and all that. It's still a huge culture shock to not live with Sage or the cats anymore. I'm so used to waking up with purring little fur babies that each morning has a pervasive sense of offness. I miss their zoomies and attitudes and companionship. I wanted Sage to have the cats. I didn't want to fight over them or split them up. Instead, I'm learning to enjoy being alone with my plants. I am finding I love rising with the sun. The dawn chorus is my new alarm clock. Sage always preferred blackout drapes and white noise machines. I was fine with that, but I've learned that's not "me" that was "me when I was with her." Still compatible, but just not me.

Goodbye, Bug. Goodbye, Jiji

I'm also kind of learning to "date myself" as Kyra calls it. I'm realizing in a lot of ways now is the first chance I've ever had to get to know who I really am. You see, we fell for each other when my brain wasn't fully cooked. At the age of 22, puberty is still crossfading out. I had some good ideas as to who I was and what I wanted. I'm happy to report most of those ideas hold true today. But many of the "implementation details" (as we call it in the tech world) are radically different now. For a dumb example: I drink Modelo instead of IPAs now. I basically can't drink IPAs anymore. Too heavy, too bad of hangovers, too expensive!

So now the game is teasing out what parts are "me" and what parts were "me because I was cohabitating with another human" and yet what other parts were "me just trying to be a good partner and maybe not exactly succeeding." It's been mostly effortless and natural to watch it unfold. I re-arranged all the household items and redecorated, made it my own. Got some new plants. I also decided to buy an $300 80L backpack instead of a car so I can go "grocery hiking." I don't think I'll ever own a car again.

When we started dating we envisioned a future of community and friends and travel and adventures and music and kids. From my perspective, one by one, each of those things slipped away from her priorities. Again, that is her story to tell for another day. I still want all those things (except probably kids) and am now actively pursuing a lifestyle that is more aligned with my values.

We'll see each other later down this dusty trail.

Thank you for all the years together.

I love you, Sage.