But I do remember, clear as crystal, what I was doing exactly one year ago tomorrow: I was hearing the news that my husband was finished with our marriage, that he'd been unhappy for a long time. (I didn't know until later that he'd already found someone else.) So mostly I spent last year tomorrow in shock. In disbelief & incredulity.
It has been an interesting 365 days. As those of you who have read my previous posts are likely aware, it's been a rocky road. So many analogies -- a death, an earthquake, the rug pulled out from beneath me -- yet none quite captures the essence of the betrayal felt by abrupt abandonment of the person I most loved & trusted in the world, a man with whom I spent sixteen years of my life. Does that make me foolish for having loved so entirely that I ended up completely unhorsed by his abrupt departure? Or simply brave & committed? One of many lingering quandaries.
I've read a lot -- a LOT -- of self-help books since then, all seeking the Holy Grail of Why & How, of "What Did He Know & When Did He Know It?," of "How Do I Not Do This Again?" And "Did I Do It To Myself, Somehow?"
The readings have ranged from those of psychologists to buddhist nuns to stand-up comedians, from perspectives of equal-blame to stake-burning wrath to the inevitably of the demise of all things. There were workbooks and exercises and graphs.
I saw -- and am still seeing -- an individual therapist, who started out as our marriage counselor for the one & only session I could coerce my husband to attend. The husband's takeaway messages from the session were only self-serving and did nothing to deter his plans, only (some might say "in a haze of misinterpretation") justifying his actions. I am grateful my therapist met him.
I haven't written a lot of blogposts because these have been dark times, and believe it or not, I do strive to be upbeat. In spite of assurances from friends that I will survive and feel better, I hadn't realized "feeling better" might mean mere numbness, as opposed to, say, joy. Another friend assured me the day would come when I would realize I hadn't thought of the divorce or my ex-husband even once that day; that day has yet to arrive.
The best days have been those involving what I've come to call "care of the vessel." The days I exercise, eat right, & sleep well are better days than those of high sugar consumption, alcoholic indulgence (well, those days are usually OK but the next days aren't so great), or sloth. -- Work has also been surprisingly therapeutic. I know who I am on workdays.
Other days, I'm not so sure. I feel remarkably like the same person, only in skin that is too tight. Perhaps not unlike a burn victim. Everything is purified in the crucible.
So, then, what have I learned about divorce, in my 365 days?
-- I will survive, whether I want to or not. So I might as well start conducting myself with this in mind. There is a future, so don't let "the vessel" get too far out of shape. Or deplete my entire bank account. Or stop bathing. There is going to be a tomorrow, so best to keep that in mind.
-- The future is unknown to us all. I had thought I was prepared for most any eventuality: illness, death, accident. I wasn't prepared for this. It's more challenging now to plan for The Future knowing how very uncertain that future is. And as we all know from personal experience, a coin turning up "heads" ten times in a row doesn't necessarily mean the next time will be "tails."
-- We're all just human. Even my ex-husband. He was just doing his best -- he sucked at the ending of things, but that was all he could do. Like the rest of us, he's a product of everything that happened in his life up until this moment: his childhood, his friends, his education, ... his marriage. This also goes for friends I lost in the divorce, which brings us to:
-- One loses friends in the divorce. This was a complete shocker to me, having been the one who got run over by the bus. Perhaps it was shocking to them, as well. I simply could not "go along to get along." My ex & I were not going to end up as friends, however inconvenient that might be to others. There's more to it than that, including some friends' own histories which might've hit too close to home for them to not side with my ex, but, again, that's more of #3 above: we're all just human.
-- Divorce is really fucking hard. I never knew. -- I'm a pop-culture geek who has probably spent way too much time in front of a TV- or movie-screen, but (again with the arrogance) I thought I was on the lookout for ways in which Screen-Life differs from real-life. Sure, none of us looks like Barbie (except the creepy chick with all the plastic surgery):
... and there's the whole talking-dog thing.
But I am now amazed how cavalierly Hollywood treats divorce, as an almost inconsequential comic thread to punch up a story line. Where are the scenes of the wife suddenly dropping fifteen pounds? Or sobbing for hours on the living room floor? Not very pleasant but a whole lot more accurate than the witty banter we typically see from most divorced sit-com characters.
-- Infidelity is not sexy, except for the two people involved. The neglected spouses are real people. They aren't necessarily ugly or stupid or harpy-shrew-bitches, as they are commonly portrayed. Somehow it's OK that the cheater spouse can be slowly checking out of the marriage emotionally, but if the partner spouse does, then that's justifiable reason for the cheater to cheat. What ever happened to communication? Commitment? Work-ethic as applied to a relationship? Does nothing have value anymore? No, much more twenty-first century to "Follow Your Bliss," never mind whom you trample to get there.
-- These are eternal themes, so there's no reason to expect them to suddenly go away just because we're all so much smarter now that we've invented the Hadron collider. It's human nature to change. Sometimes other people become casualties in that process. And not everyone is going to weather those changes gracefully or respectfully. In other words, there will always be assholes. Many of our most beloved public figures have been liars and cheaters and reprehensible people to their spouses. We admire them for their achievement and charisma, but we should not envy those people who want to be loved by them.
... There's so much more. A year of constant thinking -- rehashing and journaling and analyzing -- yields more than a handful of bullet points. For instance, there's the eventual realization that reassurance from friends aren't based as much in fact as in a genuine heartfelt desire to be supportive: "He'll realize his mistake and change his mind!" (nope) "The Karma bus will come for that guy!" (not yet) "The new girl is WAY too young for him; she'll realize soon enough he's too old for her!" (look around you at all the May-December romances out there -- more of those "eternal themes" here)
Me? I'm still recovering, still serving my sentence. I'm still grieving the "death" of my marriage and moving on; rebuilding my life after the "earthquake;" regaining my footing after "the rug was pulled out from under me."
I still don't know what the future holds. (Do any of us?) Or who I am going to be. Or what I really truly want, deep down. Do you? If you erased the most important person from your life, would you still know?
But I do know this: Now when someone tells me they're divorced, I tell them with heartfelt sincerity that I'm really so very sorry for them. I know not everyone has as much pain as I have had in my own divorce -- I do understand maybe those other divorced people are relieved. Or maybe they themselves are the cheaters. But I'll never again assume that it was nothing. Because, until this last year, I never knew how excruciating divorce can be, and how that can last for a very very long time.
