My marriage was like a bomb in the corner, a completely terrifying distraction. It continues to send out radioactive fumes of sadness and strife miles from its epicenter, which was our wedding day seven years ago.

When I said the words "It's over", all the edifices that had been erected in the name of our nuptial honor, trust and love were wiped out like Dresden. And ever since I didn't let the door hit me on my way out, I've been waging war against a karmic inevitability.

Perhaps it's a comeuppance for the people in life we hurt most, but there is a retributive force out there demanding payment for all the wrong deeds we put on our spiritual credit card. It's Karma, hitting at the worst moment, swiftly and decisively. Like a Pele scissor kick, you know it's coming. You know it will be perfectly executed and time for the greatest effect to bring you to your quivering knees. What you don't know is when. You can't prepare by tensing your gut and holding your breath. At some point you exhale. And, there it is, Karma, with a balled up fist and your name written across the knuckles.

People used to ask me why my wife and I split up. It was my routine to give a different answer for every simpering, nosy question. Dysfunctional families, incompatible libidos, mismatched personalities. My answers varied because putting a finger on the truth was like putting a finger on a vein. Try as I might to touch it, it always jumped away.

Though I can't think of it, there must be a term for the phenomenon of two people who love each other's greater whole but who are allergic to a few of the parts. It's like a rug. The color, the pattern, the weave, a harmonic convergence. Fits just right and catches the light. But when you get close, the fibers itch, the pattern is dizzying. Soon you find yourself sitting on a beautiful, light-catching piece of paradise that makes you sick.

My departure? I was driven to it. My wife was the kind of woman who could arrive three hours late with a black eye and no coat in the dead of winter, no explanation forthcoming. I was constantly worried about her when I wasn't being thrilled by her.

I called her G.G. after Chuck Yeager's plane, The Glamorous Glennis. He broke the sound barrier in that plane even though he had two busted ribs from chasing his wife horseback the night before. I've chased my wife and I've broken some sound barriers over her, too. With thrills come consequences.

If a sense of balance was my ultimate goal, then marrying a swinging emotional pendulum was not my Phi Beta Kappa move. I wanted to stay with her, or part of her, the nice, sweet part but she was a package deal. And so was I. Sure I was loving and supportive. But I could get preoccupied with work, fall asleep without cuddling, or even tell her exactly what I thought about her lunatic of a mother when asked twice in a row. She and I didn't stagnate so much as we devolved, becoming bad versions of what we thought we'd left behind in childhood. I did my obnoxious brooding in the corner. She fueled her rage with a stream of 'piss off but please don't leave me' tirades.

She insisted on therapy. Couples' therapy, group therapy, rogue's therapy. But I refused to trot out my liabilities. I already regretted them, why put the klieg lights on them? Life's way too short to go over every single one of my drunken father's misdeeds, not to mention my ACL-torn football career. A hot sake and some cold sushi worked just as well as Freud ever could. I know exactly how many straws it takes to break the camel's back. Except in my case it wasn't straws but candles. Birthday candles. I took her to New York to see a Matisse retrospective for her 29th birthday. She blew out the candles on her cake, then became enraged at some small blunder (too many candles or too few, I can't recall), tossed the cake out of our hotel window, then disappeared.

After I spent two days searching hospital morgues and sharing bad coffee with police detectives, she returned regretful and repentant. I ignored her apologies, took back the keys to my heart and converted to bachelorhood, a far safer status than that of husband.

After I left, I became fine wine. The snake that shed his skin, I thrived. Relief washed over me the way it does when you yank off a tie at the end of the day.

She wept copiously over the phone and in letter after letter asking why it had to end. Her paralyzing despair lost her one appendix and two jobs. Her 20-something rebound-before-the-ink-dries-on-the-divorce-decree boyfriend soon dumped her without ceremony. I pitied her but silently rejoiced at how her circumstances patently proved me right. She was clearly the problem, not me. Denial will do that to you because it's a setup for the karmic scissor kick.

My foolproof vaccine against feeling like a prick (against karma's fist really) was to be the best friend she ever had. I was duly suited to the role because wasn't I the one who had memorized the grottos of her mind? The way she got soft during Christmas season or references to Paris; the way she took concealed pride in her licorice black eyes and legs that stretched as long as a summer equinox? I took solace in the contradiction that we would be cool and casual, not unlike my college roommate with whom I exchange regular calls and email NBA jokes.

But the more I chased my tail with such attempts, the closer I got to hurting myself with a self-inflicted bite of reality. Her 'hey how are you' calls dried up quick. A best friend/ex-husband wasn't on her grocery list. She declined my offers of financial assistance and rain gutter cleanings. Drinks after work? Politely declined.

As the days of divorce ticked by and her withdrawal from me became complete, I realized that you can't have you cake or eat it too when it's been tossed out the window. As she quietly put it to me one night, when you know someone's every foible and fear and you leave her regardless, how can you ask to be trusted again?

That question made me desperate for one last drink of absolution. As my life hiccupped forward into a phase that could reasonably be called 'Me, AD' (After Divorce), I could not shake the sense that something would occur to explain how we had gone from in love and married, to divorced and incommunicado. Although my friends told me to get over it and move on, I couldn't move forward without confirmation that I wasn't the bad guy. No, I didn't want to be married, but I didn't want to feel guilty about it either.

So I kept waiting for the gasping midnight call: The denouncement of her enigmatic disappearance from my life. In this fantasy, my ex-wife calls me from a corner pay phone having just escaped her captors: The mafia boyfriend or the Sri Lanka cell of Al Qaeda. Conspirators against our friendship. She is protecting me from their wrath. She is saving my life.

"Why didn't you call the police?" She says between heaving breaths.

"The police?" I mumble confused, though I know exactly what she means.

"Did you really think I didn't want to talk to you? Ever?" Hurt and disbelief color her voice. "I loved you more than life. Did you really think I would….just FORGET you?"

But there was no hostage situation. There would be no breathless midnight call.

It was only the slow passage of time that diffused the fantasy. I left her, and now, in her own way, she gets to leave me. Slowly, agonizingly stripping away every single emotion from the left side of the bed where she slept. Nuptial honor, trust, love. Gone like Dresden.

In their place are still the great things I learned from her and the wonderful, less jagged moments we held in our hands. Like the curious way we met, one of us heading into a lecture on anger management, one of us storming out of it. Or the day we looked over the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and surrendered to its majesty. Or the harrowing late night we heard a screeching crash and rushed outside to see a crowd descending on the idiotic drunken driver who'd woefully plowed into three cars.

Before the enraged neighbors could tear his limbs from his body, my wife stood defiantly between him and their blood lust. I admired her pluck, her fearlessness, because at least I had a bat in my hands.

When I asked her what the hell she was thinking when she decided to take on the entire angry mod, she said she wasn't thinking, she was just feeling. Feeling like maybe if she helped him, he would later tell his story in an AA meeting and it would be okay.

She had that distinct ability to see the best side of people: the side sometimes hidden, God couldn't even see it. The side I was sure she would always see in me.

If there is such a thing as freedom after divorce, it lies in the ability to sit in detached curiosity: On a rug that doesn't make your eyes water.

It's in shaking reality's hand and knowing that your altruism isn't so true after all. It's just your silly way of trying to push the hold button on that call from the karmic auditor.

There's the rub. You can't hit the hold button and back-pedal through misdeeds. Life is going to keep marching. And so will karma.

The only way to rule your fears is to forgive them. You do what you do out of courage and love. You live life without watching your back or wearing a flak vest over your emotions, divorce included. Shed some skin; drink some wine. And if karma decides to deck you, try to duck next time.