Groons Representative (0:00)

Are you feeling overwhelmed with all the supplements out there? We get it. There is a lot of misinformation and fake claims. That's why Groons took the time to understand proper dosing to ensure nutrition is optimized and safe, convenient, comprehensive formula. Are you currently taking multiple vitamin supplements a day? This isn't a multivitamin, a greens gummy or a prebiotic. It's all of those things and then some at a fraction of the price. And bonus, it tastes great. The holiday season into the new year can be overwhelming. It can feel impossible to stick to a routine. But Groons can help you by meeting your nutritional needs. And vitamins are portable. Eight gummies in each daily snack pack. Because you can't fit the amount of nutrients we do into just one Gummy plus it makes a fun treat. Groons is more comprehensive and accurately dosed than your current nutrition solution. Check the label. Vitamins are 100% and and minerals at about 25% the safe and effective amount. Gruen's ingredients are backed by over 35,000 research publications. You wanted a supplement you could enjoy. This isn't a chore, it's something you look forward to. Get up to 45% off. Use the code MOTH the Apple Watch.

Apple Representative (1:12)

Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist whether you're running, swimming or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10 available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum compared to previous generations. IPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary.

Dan Kennedy (1:42)

Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm Dan Kennedy. This week's story is by James Brawley. James has been telling stories at the Moth for many years. He even told a story at the Moth's first Grand Slam back in 2001. He also went on to write and perform the Off Broadway show Life in a marital 20 years of monogamy in one terrifying hour. That's now an itunes release. To go along with the iTunes release, we thought you'd like to hear a new story that he told this past February in Portland, Oregon. The theme of the night was don't look back.

James Brawley (2:18)

Thank you very much. So I'm sitting at my desk in my little apartment in this tiny town in western Massachusetts, sorting through a big box of photographs of my life with my wife Jane. A few hours from now, we're scheduled to meet one last time at the mediators and sign our separation agreement. So I'm crying because I'm terrified I'm making this huge mistake, leaving a woman I have loved over half my life at this point and who I am certain I'll love for the rest of my life. That much I know. We've been together so long I can't even remember what it feels like to not be us. I've gone from boy to man, husband to father, all with Jane. All in photographs the day I graduated from college, standing in a cap and gown amidst 5,000 people, kissing Jane like nobody's there. Our first trip to Europe, on a street in Paris. You have no idea when this is. The buildings are centuries old and Jane's in this timeless red coat and earmuffs. All you can tell is that she's radiantly happy and whoever's taking this photograph loves her. Standing in our living room in our first apartment, in party hats and party favors like two little kids on our wedding day, in the back of the London taxi, surrounded by flowers from our wedding reception. I'd seen the taxi at a stoplight in New York a few years back and asked the driver for his business card, thinking one day you might need this. Our first son in his little car seat after we'd just gotten out of a taxi, bringing him home from the hospital for the first time. Jane and I holding it together, standing in front of our apartment building. Our second son in that same building moments after he was born, in our living room on purpose, the four of us together on a beach vacation, tan and smiling, scrunched together in the frame as I snapped the photo. Every major stage of life, Jane and I have been through it together. She's like my name. I know there's a time I didn't have it, but I can't actually feel what that was like versus Jane and how she feels. My hands have actually grown around her body. I would know her with my eyes closed. The problem is that even with my eyes closed there's a whole other set of memories, and I don't have any pictures of those. You never take your camera out during a fight. The hundreds of times I begged her to stop nursing the boys after they'd turned 3 and then 4 and then 5 years old with teeth and chores and baseball gloves. Stop breastfeeding. The short stops or the hundreds of times she begged me to stop reorganizing the spices in the kitchen alphabetically and by bottle size when I didn't do any cooking. I am not controlling. I just respect order or the Time when, in addition to being controlling, was I hyper competitive? At one of our son's birthday parties, after Jane had organized a non competitive game of musical chairs, leaving an apartment full of happy and smiling kids versus the children, after I had organized a game of real musical chairs, leaving one winner in an apartment full of losers, including my son, in tears, did I recognize the error of my ways and the wisdom of Jane's? Absolutely. Did I tell Jane? Absolutely not. Love means never having to say you're sorry, and I love Jane. In addition to being controlling and hyper competitive, was I paranoid just because I believed that all the paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art were fakes? Because who in their right minds would let such someone like me stand inches from real Rembrandts with a Swiss army knife in my pocket? I could slash it up just like that. After Jane realized I was telling her the truth, she asked, where do you think they keep the real Rembrandts? And I said, in vaults in the basement next to the workshops where they make all of the other fakes of the Ming vases and the Byzantine jewelry they sell in the gift shops. Leading Jane to conclude that in addition to being controlling and competitive and paranoid, I was crazy. Just basically the same thing. I thought about her every time we sat down to have a meal, or tried to. One time we were on vacation, standing in a deli, and I was ordering smoked turkey sandwiches and potato chips, and Jane said I couldn't have the smoke because it had nitrates and the potato chips were fried in cottonseed oil. Cotton, not a food product. No FDA oversight. I said, we're on vacation. The boys said, we're starving. And the woman behind the turkey slicer said absolutely nothing. She just stared at us through these vacant husks. It was like looking at me in a hairnet. Thousands of these arguments, which maybe on their own don't seem significant, but when added together, it feels like you've been through a war, a death by a thousand cuts. I really wish I had photographs of those memories right now to go along with the happy memories, which I'm actually holding in my hand. They're real things. As the phone rings and it's Jane saying, how you doing? I say, not good. She says, do you think we should go through with this? Like, it's my decision, which it is, but I'm not qualified to make decisions. Decisions aren't my forte. I think I'm the most indecisive guy I've ever met. So I'm half hoping when I say we have to go through with this. That she'll say, well, actually we don't. We could go to a 14th marriage counselor. Or maybe to one of those getting the love you deserve weekends with the crazy couple in North Carolina. Come on, James, don't give up. Because that's what she always says. But this time she says, I guess you're right. Finally she agrees with me. A few hours later, we're at the mediators. He's on one side of a desk and we're sitting side by side on the other. And on the desktop I've built an altar to our marriage. Four or five photographs from the big box leaning like a teepee against this giant organic Canadian baby beeswax candle. It's made from the honeycomb tops of organic Canadian baby bees. It costs an absolute fortune, but Jane loves the fragrance and supposedly it burns for 700 hours, so it's a good value. I'll never know. I'm giving it to her along with the house. She grabs one of the photographs from the altar and says, look at that family like it's somebody else. Which soon it will be. We are so strong, she says, and balanced. And now I agree with her. She's the home, I'm the worker. One son's an athlete, the other is an artist. We have everything anyone could reasonably expect out of life. Jane hops up on my lap like she did on our first date, and then cranes her head into my neck like a swan, like we mated for life, which Jane says we have and next life too. She believes in reincarnation. The mediator says, well, this is very unusual and I've seen this a lot. Are you sure you want to do this? Jane says we love each other, which is true, which is why I'm not sure I want to do this. But I'm not sure about anything. Being uncertain just means I'm alive. The mediator asks his assistant to come in and says, will you give them that piece of paper you use? And she hands us a sheet of non denominational wedding vows saying, I marry people when I'm not divorcing them. Hang on to that, James, says the mediator. One day you might need it. And then the assistant drops a big stack of separation agreements on the desk which are as big as the altar. And Jane starts crying, saying I'm losing everything I have ever wanted. And I am too. I've had two stepmothers and three stepfathers, a half dozen brothers and sisters in law, some of them twice 12 marriages amongst five people. Mine is the 13th marriage and it's the last first marriage, the last chance to change this history and have a family I can count on, which I am breaking apart, and no one is telling me don't do it, including Jane. One at a time, we sign and countersign the separation agreements, handing them back and forth to each other. Jane's signature looking exactly as it did on the night we met at the Hungarian pastry shop, when she wrote her name and number on this little scrap of paper and I put it in my wallet and brought it home and put it on my bedside table and kissed it good night for three weeks until I finally got through the busy signal. When the last agreement is signed and countersigned, I hand the mediator my camera and Jane and I stand against the wall and pose. The mediator snaps a shot and says, what do you think? And I think it looks like we just got married. And I'm looking at a picture of when we just got married right there on his desk, right? We are beaming because this is what it looks like to agree about education and health care and money and all the things we've been bickering about for years. Granted, it took seven lawyers and a judge and a forensic psychologist and a mediator and a whole lot of money, but all's well that ends well. I am so happy I could ask her to marry me. A few minutes later, we're walking down the sidewalk, hand in hand, embracing at her car, feeling her shape, inhaling her scent one last time, knowing that I will always regret leaving her, but that this is what it means to be me. The most you can hope for if you're me, is that this is the right thing to do right now. Leaving a woman I have loved more than anyone I've ever known, except for my boys. Which is why one of the photographs on the desk was of them and me. The three of us on vacation, me suspending them by their ankles, upside down, back when I was strong enough and they were small enough for me to suspend them, all three of us laughing. It's the picture of happiness, which Jane not only photographed, but made possible. Because the truth is, I didn't have the courage to reproduce. I didn't want to be me. And I could not imagine making someone else feel that way. But she did have the courage, which made it very easy to follow her to this emotional continent I didn't even know existed. Kind of like she's following me now to this brand new place and our lives. I can actually see her behind me in the rearview mirror as we're driving home so I slow down so that the other cars can't come between us like we're still together. I'm in front, she's behind. Our kids are in school. Everyone is exactly where they should be right now as I pull down my signal and turn. Thank you.