For years, I thought if I ever wrote a memoir, I’d call it “I Married Jimmy Barclay.” Is that weird? I wasn’t even the main character in my story. I guess the actual person I married isn’t either. The character he played before we even met ended up being the focal point. I’ve been a supporting character in my own story for too long, but I’m ready for that to change.

*I used “I’m just here because I married Jimmy Barclay.” as a signature in my forum profile for thetoo.com, an AIO fan forum, for a bit.

Technically, it’s not divorce, and it’s not done yet. I filed for legal separation, and it’s still in process. The paperwork and back-and-forth just to not be married is a hassle, and I’m aiming to do it without lawyers or court decisions. It could be worse. But I think that, when all is done, everyone will be happier.

We have been married for 20 years and together for almost 27. We met when we were 20 and 21 years old. We’ve spent so much of our lives together, and we’ve grown and evolved from this partnership. Now, it’s time to focus on our own paths, taking with us all the lessons and memories we’ve made.

Dave and I met, as retold many times, in the Mulan Parade at Disneyland. He was working as a DJ, ice sculptor apprentice, and a few other related side jobs, and a friend told him about upcoming juggler auditions at Disneyland. He tried out, but they decided to bring a troupe from China instead. They asked him if he’d like to still be in the parade as part of a dragon forming the Great Wall of China.

I had met the same friend while auditioning for Fantasmic the month before. The callbacks were great; they had me try on the Mary Poppins wig! But I smiled when they snapped my Polaroid because it was that exciting. Mary Poppins does not smile a toothy smile. I went back the following month for the next audition, and I was cast as one of two people at the head of the dragon! Being tall-ish helped! They later shifted casts around, and I became a flower dancer swing.

We met in late June when I sat beside him at the cast cafe between parades. I was wearing a wig cap and a blue smock. He was writing poetry to impress the girl on his right. It didn’t work.

My psychiatrist asked me a few months ago if the story was somewhat like a fairytale, and that’s why it was hard to let go of it. That might be true. Disneyland was a happy place for me, and I went to school in Orange County just to have a chance to work there. Would this have been such a hard thing to do if we met at a Starbucks or in Ralphs? We’ll never know.

I kept the ticket from the first movie we ever went to together. It was Saving Private Ryan, a matinee before work. Does that set a tone for who we were as a couple? Does it help to say we got married one Monday at the county courthouse on my way to work, both wearing jeans? We were never fancy or traditional; I liked that.

When we met, I had never heard of Adventures in Odyssey. He explained it as something he’d done as a child and teenager, recording the (at the time) final Pokenberry Christmas episodes the year before. I’m pretty sure the words he used were “a little show I was on as a kid.” I couldn’t know what effect that past would have on our lives.

Finding someone at such a young age is amazing and also not so much. There’s a lot of life that both of us somewhat regret not having. Our kids are 21, 17, and 15. Coworkers of mine about the same age have elementary or younger kids. I don’t know what else I would have done, but it’s interesting now to reflect and wonder how life would have been different.

I think we both felt like we were each other’s path, that we both had a gap in our lives filled by each other. Is that how love works? I’m not sure now. But we were inseparable from August 1998 on.

The internet was still pretty new then, and we didn’t do everything online or on our phones. It wasn’t until we conducted a web search in 2005 that we discovered just how popular AIO really was. It was then we connected with the community.

Only because of AIO did I:

• Join an online forum about AIO and meet so many of the friends I have now (I love you and that will never change)
• Join phpBB the software organization and moderate their forums for over a decade (I had to officially resign, but I will support the project and people forever)
• Join Facebook or really any other social media, initially just to keep up with my existing online friends in another location
• Due to the above, get interested in open-source software and install WordPress to make a website
• Create a store on my website using WooCommerce
• Have an online contracting job supporting WordPress.com and Pinterest, among others
• Get a job with Automattic working on WooCommerce

It’s a weird thing to say, but my current life exists because I married Jimmy Barclay.

That character and everything related to it ended up setting a lot of the tone of the relationship, thinking back on things. Dave was raised going to church, and while not as evangelical as Focus on the Family is now, there’s still a big difference from how I was raised. I’m the heathen, non-church-going one your mother warned you about. Yes, that “unequally yoked” thing was thrown around at the beginning. It didn’t feel like a problem then, but the stage was set for this to crumble from our early years, at least a decade before we even met.

Now in our late (gasp) 40s, we’re both unpacking our lives and managing our childhood trauma and realizing that this just doesn’t make sense. Some of it is a religious upbringing and what that does to a person coming out of it on the other side. Some of it is my distant relationships with my family, and a mother who was especially critical of me. (I’m wearing a black sweater, Mom! No, it doesn’t make me look goth! And even if it did, I don’t care!) All that baggage moved in when we moved in together in 1999 and was just left in the imaginary attic in boxes, and now we’re going through it.

He’s been covering the exvangelical unboxing on his blog. I haven’t had anything to say. Yet. Other than the title of this post, sticking in my head for so long. There’s a lot to think about what the evangelical patriarchal structure harms in the modern marriage. When there’s an expectation of what life and union mean, can it not going that way work out in the end? Or when each side has different preconceived expectations of how marriage works, will it last? Or if those expectations aren’t yet realized in each partner? Or as you each grow and evolve, how does that expectation of a partnership change with it? And as progressive as one might become, can that basis ever be overcome to create a partnership of equality in responsibility, trust, and shared goals? Can someone from a distant family learn to show and receive love in a way that meets the expectations of those seeking a traditional relationship? And how does either person maintain a non-traditional, gender-role-bucking relationship with all of these factors? Does any of that make any sense at all?

Sidenote: none of this should be construed as the whole story. 27 years is too much to fit here.

I’m not sure what life outside of this will be like. Does anyone know what life is really going to be like before it happens? I took the past week off from work on vacation with myself to give him a chance to hang out with the kids but without me while living in the same house for the last time.

Here’s to the next book, with me as my main character.

In grief and happiness,