Midnight words

It’s midnight, give or take a few minutes. You dodged your own bullets, another round. You don’t, always.

Small victory, you think. Or not. These days, it is impossible to tell what is a victory and what is not, and this is maddening to you.

You could have called; you did not. You could have said too much; you did not. You could have gone where you shouldn’t; you did not. You could have asked for the unthinkable; you did not. You thought about it — of course you did. You had a plan, you had a fleeting hope. You had choices.

These are times when any move or no move could be the right thing to do. ‘Right’ is losing its meaning, as is ‘wrong.’

Instead, you painted the bathroom with $50 worth of cheap paint, cheap rollers, cheap brushes, cheap pans. Your new career will not be house painter. It is a disastrous job. Still, you gleaned some satisfaction in the vanilla cream as you slapped it haphazardly on the walls. Sometimes, there is pleasure in a job done badly, but passionately. A revelation.

Still, you saw in your mind the scar on the back of his hand as you gently tapped the paint can closed, the way you saw him do it a year ago, in the kitchen.

*****

These days, you strain your addled brain to think of who it was who said, “Put your head down close to your soul and listen hard.” One of the many writer Annes? You have your head and heart pressed to your soul, at all times, and the messages are mixed at best.

Some People Think Things. You assume they Think Things, Think They Know, because you are a person too, and you have Thought Things, Assumed Things, Judged Things. But the divorce has humbled you, knocked you to your knees. You want to hug everyone you see, you want to tell them that you understand that you don’t understand. You see broken people wherever you go. You are no longer who you were.

There is so much more to it, to what you are thinking and not thinking, but you don’t know whom to tell. Part of the deal, this divorce deal, is living with others’ assumptions, following you around like little dirty Pigpen clouds. You try not to look over your shoulder. You try to look ahead. But it is no easy feat. The public truth is not the private truth. You have never witnessed so many shades of beautiful, heartrending gray in your life.

Whoever it was, whoever counseled listening closely to that enigmatic soul, well, you are pretty sure she killed herself. One of those, one of the many who wrote, once, from a place you understand now. You can’t help understanding them, and of course that worries you. Just when you get to know them (for you are a late literary bloomer), you find out they are no longer of this earth. Then you find you are relieved for them, and a little envious, if you are being perfectly honest (of course ‘perfectly honest’ is another term that has diluted over time).

*****

There have been a number of suicides in this small community lately. When a good friend says what she feels she must say about one of these suicides—how could she / she had children / it’s so selfish—you surprise yourself with the vehemence of your response. You defend this stranger, a woman you never met, and never will.

It was not selfish, this much you are sure of. There is pain, and there is Pain. And when pain transforms into Pain, all bets are off.

You know this. You are not there, you managed to paint a bathroom today, but you’ve been close enough to know.

“She was in Pain,” you hear yourself saying, stumbling over your words, speaking too fast. “She did the best she could. It wasn’t selfish — she just felt she had nothing left to give.”

Your friend eyes you carefully. You have more to say, it is clear. You say, “She probably saw herself as a terrible burden. This, no. This is not selfishness. This is the end of the line. She loved her children so much she couldn’t bear for them to go on with a mother like that, so mired in grief.”

Your friend nods. She sees where you are coming from. If it worries her, she does not let on, not here in the parking lot of your children’s school.

“Well,” she says. She is on her way to the wake. You are not, because you do not know this woman, the woman who died. But your heart aches for her, for what she felt was inevitable. After all, you have daughters too.

*****

You try to draw a circle around yourself, as you make your way through each day. A psychic told you you needed more filters. Air-conditioning? Auto? You try to meditate sometimes, imagining yourself perched in a paper coffee filter. You are still not sure what the psychic meant, but now you think about filters, often.

The days pass slowly, brutally so on some days. Often, you wake up already wilting, knowing you should be grateful for your life, grateful to have a first breath of the day awaiting you. Instead, you gulp and wonder how you will possibly make it through a lifetime. God blew it, you find yourself thinking idly, almost daily. The human lifespan is too long, too long, too long.

Your girls will read this someday. This doesn’t bother you. Strangely, you have been a better mother to them than you have in a long time. Let them have this, let them have it all, you think. Maybe they will want these pages, maybe not. You want them to know that laughter can emanate from someone broken, someone who is not sure how she will possibly find a way to continue in this world. You find the laughter miraculous, when it comes.

Most of the time, your life is a trainwreck, is how it feels. There are many kind people on hand to tell you that this is not the case, not at all the case, but it is difficult to take their word for it. They say they are trying to let you make your way, “at your own pace.” You have no idea what this means anymore. You have been trying to move at others’ pace. You blur into others, they blur into you.

One beloved friend laughs exasperatedly at you at your frequent use of the phrase “too much.” You worry constantly that you are saying too much, thinking too much, asking for too much. The problem, of course, is that you don’t know what you are allowed to have in this lifetime. You no longer have a grasp on this. You have two healthy, whip-smart daughters, kind readers, and a roof over your head. There are many people who love you, whom you love back. But you despair.

The thought of promises and vows terrifies you now. You feel hollow, carved out, your heartache and yearning and desire sitting in an unsavory pile beside you—a tag sale of offerings you can’t seem to unload.

You want to be wanted for exactly who you are, like every other human on the planet. Nothing original. You are not asking for originality. You suspect that your desires are powerful, but mundane.

But you have been a chameleon for so long you no longer know the difference between what you need and what you want.

And this seems to you to be a fairly important distinction, if you’re hankering for a life well lived. Which you are.

*****

The other night, another beloved friend cuts your hair and reduces you to tears. She has not seen you cry before, although you have been telling her for months that all you do is cry when no one is looking. It is not the loss of the hair that brings on the tears; it is her plan to create a glorious art community, a utopia full of friends and lovers and music and magic. You listen to her speak. You listen to others respond positively, enthusiastically. Yet all you can do is sob.

Because you do not believe it is possible, such a place. Or, if it is possible, you do not believe your life would allow you to go there, to find peace there. Your girls need you, but they also need to be close to their father. You want this for them.

You feel on the outside of something beautiful and free, permanently so. You don’t know where you can go anymore.

Others need you. They want to help you. They want to see you ‘moving on.’ The world is full of people, it seems, who are good at moving on, people who have read the manual. This ‘moving on’ is not a skill that comes easily to you, and your failure in this department embarrasses you, again and again.

You know in your heart of hearts you have never moved on from anyone you have loved.

You don’t want to belong to anyone, but you want to be loved, of course you do.

You cannot find your center. You cannot find your home, even when you are in it — the concrete place identified on legal papers as your home. You are now the Head of Household, according to the accounts and the federal government, but you don’t know what to make of your new title.

You realize how much home to you has been about other people. This scares you, profoundly. You are losing touch with what is possible, with what you need, uniquely. Some of what you need is unspeakable, and you know it.

Speakable: You want that Nova Scotia cottage with perpetual soup on the stove, a place of no judgment, a place of humanity and safety and love and being heard. When you tried to find that once, tried to get it back, in smart ways and stupid ways, your world derailed. You are still picking through the wreckage. Even this — midnight words — you hesitate as you write, knowing just who will read them and guessing at what they will make of your thoughts.

You mostly believe Dr. Phil when he tells his studio audience, “You’d be surprised to find out just how rarely other people give any thought to you.”

But there is always a handful of folks whose opinion matters to you. You can’t imagine a life in which it did not matter. You can’t imagine people not noticing, not wondering.

Almost speakable: You have lost his friends, his family. You cannot reach out to your once-husband’s tribe, that seems to be the rule. You wish they would reach out to you, if even just once. But this is divorce; you harbor no illusions. You understand. The wagons, circled, fierce and tight.

Still, you long to reach out, to touch what once was, to show that your heart is open, that you are not unkind, that you are not insane, that you are working hard to find answers, that you want him to be happy, that you will always love him, that you don’t understand — not fully — how it came to this. This.

You want them to know there is so much more to the story than they realize. You long for a life closer to the Nova Scotia cottage, a life not just bohemian in its creativity and art, but in how you and they choose to love, to keep loving. There are two beautiful little girls in this world who were borne out of true love. Surely this should count for more, somehow.

*****

This morning, all four of you ate breakfast together: your once-husband, your children, you. You were Invited. It was strange and lovely and gut-twisting, the only way these things can be, perhaps. You don’t dare ask if there will be more mornings like this. You can’t bring yourself to say all the things you want to say. Instead, you eat the apple pancakes that your husband used to make in the house you once shared. You drink coffee together as the kids play and pack their bags for the trip to your house. You lie on the wood floors. You try not to look around too much. You pretend not to see the name written on the notepad by his phone, or the title of the book he is reading. The details are potent and hurt like nothing else.

There is no status quo, not yet.

*****

Several weeks ago, driving home from Parent-Teachers night at your daughters’ school, you began weeping. You wept so hard that you considered pulling over onto the shoulder of the dark road. You wept until you ran out of tears, because you and your always-beloved once-husband received, for the first time, separate packets of information. You wept because the new school directory listed you separately, with separate addresses. You wept because he did not say goodbye to you when you left that school cafeteria full of evening small talk and Brie and terrible coffee.

You have no idea what he thinks about such things. You wonder if these are the things that break him too, or if there are entirely different things that break him when he is out of your sight, which is nearly all the time now.

The not-knowing is painful. The wound does not fester, but neither does it show signs of healing. You leave it open, you do not dress it. Perhaps it needs air, you think. Just more air. If only there were enough air.