Two mornings ago, Sophie asked me this: “If you had to choose one age to be for your entire life, what would it be?”
Clarifying, she said, “Nothing that came after that age that happened in real life would happen, only the things before.”
Thinking about that and coming up with an answer took some doing. I’ve always maintained that the world would not keep turning on its axis without Sophie and Hattie. So that would take me to at least 2003.
“You’d both have to be there. So I’d be…33,” I told her.
“Why 33?” she asked.
“Hannah would be just born. You’d be two and a half. It would be cold and beautiful outside, and Daddy and I would still be together, and everything would still make some sense.”
*****
Fall of 2003. It was a happy, serene time, except for the loss of my aunt. But her presence remained that fall and winter. Hattie’s birth had been uncomplicated and beautiful. My old soul dog was still alive. My marriage was still alive. All that was expected of me was to nurse our baby, care for our warm living creatures (human and canine), curl up with my husband at night, and just BE. I did not need eight different pills a day, I did not hear or see things that I could not explain. I thought I knew exactly who I was.
Looking back, 2003 seems like a dream of a dream—gauzy figments of someone else’s life? I can’t touch it. There is no going back. Who was that woman?
*****
I talked to a divorced man the other day. We hesitantly shared some stories, asked some questions, seeking perspective. Sounding suddenly worried, he asked if he came across as bitter. He did not. I told him: no, not bitter, that it was simply clear that his heart had been sliced in two, as had hers.
There are no survivors. Our previous selves die in divorce. That is what I believe now. Then we rebuild, a new self.
I don’t see how any relationship can work. I don’t. Oh, I want to again. I do. But I can’t fathom how I once believed in undying love. Let me rephrase that: I believe in undying love, but I can’t fathom how two parts remain one. This is not bitterness; this is bewilderment.
If you are one of two happy parts loving and living together as a one, I ask you to count your blessings, to reserve judgment, and to put aside speculation about those who have lost their way. You are fortunate in what you know, and in what you do not know.
*****
I was blithe in 2003. I was even more blithe in 1999, when we eloped, in the month of September. I was absolutely certain of my decision. I look back, and I still am certain. I would change nothing. I could not have changed anything. I was more than “in love.” I loved. I still do.
I wish. I still do.
Now, this time of year has taken on a heavy yoke and shifts uncomfortably under its burden.
*****
This has never been a “divorce blog.” This is not a bitter place. Certainly, I wish I could laugh more again—in life and in my writing. I read my early blog entries and I smile at the author’s light touch, her deft tales of marriage and parenting. So funny, so accessible.
I think sorrow can also be accessible. I think it’s fair to write about sorrow, about divorce, if there’s a universality there—if the words can provide shelter to others who have lost their way and have nowhere safe to go. I feel like, based on some of the disappointed and angry words that come my way, we’ve been taught to shy away from it, to shun it, to fictionalize it. To rough it up, make it unrecognizable.
We have been taught to get our hackles up when we hear too often about divorce or separation. People want “the dirt.” I choose not to offer up “the dirt,” because whom—and how—could that help? Flagellation (self- or otherwise) is futile, and there’s already been plenty of it, behind closed doors.
I write about my sorrow, because I am not over this loss, and there are days when I am convinced I will not make it through the day, that I will not see another full moon. I am astonished when people tell me they are “over it”—their own divorces. The divorce is part of who I am now, and there is no way to write here without the grief of it seeping in through the walls. I don’t mind that my daughters will read this someday. I have said nothing that I regret. They live here and with their father; they see my heart and his. They already know in their little souls that their parents struggle as they try to find new ways of living and loving. They know they are loved, and that their parents are capable of loving, and loving well, and working well together as proud parents.
Maybe this will change? I cannot say. Here is where I am. I loved him easily and powerfully and forever, and he is no longer here. I can’t imagine anything else ever feeling the same.
I have become wary. Wary and lonely, a difficult pairing to write around. If the only way past it is through, then I must keep writing through. Come with me if you like. I want to stay open, and gentle. Wary and lonely is tough as it is, without the loss of gentleness.
*****
I am no longer 33. I am 39, and I feel years older. I feel ancient. Innocence is gone. So I try to see my world as the new cat does: full of small but intriguing, disparate objects and warm, interesting humans. No through-line required.
Maybe years from now Sophie will ask me the same question: which age? Maybe I will say, “Thirty-nine. I learned so much. I never could have gotten here without there.”
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