365 Days

I don't remember what I was doing exactly one year ago today -- I might have been working. Or perhaps I had a day off to run with the dogs. Maybe I was working in the yard and planning dinner for the upcoming weekend with my husband. It was near Mother's Day, so maybe that was the day I finally put the card for his mother in the outgoing mail.

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.

On Loss

When I was a little girl, I had the most fantastic bicycle. Perhaps its magical entry into my life -- found parked under the Christmas tree one thrilling December morning -- marked its inevitable role as a cherished and often-remembered part of my childhood. It was pink. And it had a banana seat. And a little white basket with plastic pink & yellow daisies on the front. And sparkling streamers from the ends of the handlebars. -- And my mother had also hung a small horse-shaped Christmas tree ornament from one handlebar, fond as I was of horses at that age.

I loved that bike. In truth, I thought I was pretty hot shit, riding around the neighborhood on my brand new bike. (My dad tended to be thrifty, so almost all our toys were secondhand: pogo sticks with broken springs, jigsaw puzzles that were missing pieces.) 

But, here's the thing: I don't remember what ever happened to that bike. I have to imagine I outgrew it. But it's equally likely it got broken somehow. Or maybe one of my teenage brothers hocked it for some weed (not an implausible scenario).

And also, I don't really remember that it was pink. I think it was pink. I mean, I'm pretty sure. But I can't swear to it. Or, honestly, the banana seat, either. Maybe that was a later bike. 

But I loved that bike. It's safe to say I probably loved that bike then as much as I love my dogs now, which is to say, a lot. Like "I'd throw myself in front of a car to save it" a lot. And, yet, I have no recollection of how or when that bike left my life, or even clear memories regarding specific details about it.

Which leads me to contemplate how the mind processes loss. One moment you have something, and the next you don't. Loss can impact our lives in an infinite number of ways: death, divorce, illness, breach of trust, friends moving away, betrayal, injury, … The list goes on.

At some point, after loss, we must each reach a point where we "move on." It's been almost a year since my divorce, and I'm still not sure what that means, to move on.

There is, of course, action. The actions of moving through life and completing the necessary movements to be perceived by others as a sane and functional human being: grooming, dressing, eating, paying bills. Perhaps even conversing with friends and coworkers. 

A more personal level of action might be one we take in our own private lives: trying to sort the memories (and sometimes actual physical objects) which remind of what we have lost. The amputee who throws away all their left shoes, for instance. Or in my case, all the photos of my married years being packed away for another less vulnerable time -- sometime, in the future. Supposedly.

Maybe it depends on the way you lose a thing that determines (at least in part) how you recover, what your timeline looks like. My parents were sick with Alzheimer's for years before they died from it. My father's death was preceded by several months of illness which our family elected not to treat surgically, as he'd long been unresponsive by that time. In the end, his death was a blessing, and though he is still missed, these four years later, "getting over" his death wasn't nearly as difficult as accepting the previous losses of his intelligence, his wit, his personality. 

My divorce, on the other hand, was abrupt. I was informed in one thirty-four word sentence that my ex-husband was finished with our marriage, when I'd had no advance notification that he was even unhappy. Our marriage was like a murderer accused and convicted, with "no priors."

And so it's taken some time. To "move on." But I finally feel this loss morphing into something that "just was." Not unlike my childhood bicycle, it seems no amount of backward glancing serves to further clarify or explain what happened to it. And, like my bicycle, I have some theories, ideas, recollections --  some more plausible than others. But there's little to no evidence to support these ideas, only the unreliability of memory, distorted by personal perception.

There's a sadness of its own in letting something go. A guilt in "moving on," as if the thing lost never had the value attributed to it in the first place. It seems strange to have a numbness in a place in my heart, in my brain, which previously held buckets & buckets of love and concern and intimacy and joy and friendship … and love. 

Twenty years ago, I had surgery on my knee, and there's still a spot just below the kneecap that has no feeling. The doctor explained the nerve had been severed and might never grow back. It's a small area, maybe a half-inch diameter, but no matter how hard I poke it, I feel nothing. 

Maybe loss is like that: scar tissue. The inability of certain sensations to ever regenerate, leaving behind a persistent "dead spot." And, like that scar tissue, I'm certain if I probed hard & deep enough, I could find pain there again, or maybe create some where none even previously existed. But where's the good in that?

Lying Under Trees: Wasting Time in the Great Outdoors

I spend a lot of time in my head these day. Anyone who follows this blog or who knows me personally knows I've recently been through divorce, the circumstances of which left behind many unanswered (and more than a few unanswerable) questions. Some months ago, I posted an arrogant column boldly declaring my quest for reason amid the storm, over. -- It's funny now to think I ever thought that was true.

Yes, since that column, I have continued to pad the pockets of Jeff Bezos & co., buying self-help book after self-help book. I realized a couple days ago, the book I'm currently studying -- because that's what I do, I study these books; they aren't entertainment, they're the Rosetta stone to the demise of my marriage -- 

-- was written by two comedians. No psychology training whatsoever. 

Nevertheless, I must confess even their layman's approach offered a few viewpoints I'd not previously considered.

And currently, I'm considering a lot of different viewpoints. A lot. The view from inside my head looks a little bit like this:

So sometimes it's a good idea to get out of my head. (Many would argue -- and some brave souls already have -- that the frequency with which that's a "good idea" far exceeds "sometimes.") 

Fortunately, I have dogs. And, though tolerant, they willingly admit they haven't gotten much out of my endless days spent poring through books with titles like, "It's Called a Break-Up Because It's Broken" and "Coming Apart: Why Relationships End." They much prefer my reading Amy Poehler's "Yes, Please." I laugh a lot more and the chapters are short, which means more snacks for them and me, both.

Nevertheless, I try to get out every day for a walk or a run with them. Some years ago, a respected runners' magazine featured an article advising me (as a master's [old] runner) to run only every other day to avoid longterm joint damage. I don't even know if that's still the prevailing theory, but I heard it once and that's good enough excuse for me to take every other day off. I mean, I enjoy running but let's not be ridiculous. (By the way, if that's no longer the prevailing theory, I'll pay you ten bucks to keep it to yourself.)

So on days I don't run, I mostly hike through the woods. All the little nooks & crannies give the dogs the opportunity to feel like the big bad hunters their ancestors were, so they can feel all righteous and supreme when their lying on their double-decker dog beds back in front of the fireplace at home.

"Only double-decker?"

I've also discovered a new indulgence while hiking. It's called "resting."

I've always fancied myself a bit of an athlete, so for me hiking is frequently equated with working out. In general, I prefer to just do my workout straight through, no breaks. In fact, it could be argued I vaguely resent taking fitness classes and being advised by the instructor to take a break & go get a drink of water. Breaks are for wimps! And who needs water? This isn't the Gobi desert!

So, while hiking, I typically only stop long enough to "refuel" (eat), then onward (and, usually around here, upward).

But here's the thing. I enjoy being outdoors. I like the trees -- actually, I love the trees. I tell them so all the time. 

A tree I had a crush on, in Corvallis, Oregon

And the earth. And the snow. And the grass and leaves and mud and streams and wind…. Yeah, I really dig the wind.

So then why don't I just hang out more when I'm hiking? Well, currently, it's because I've got this little professor in my head nagging at me to get back home to my homework. I've got some Very Important Questions that still need answering! And, let's face it, a warm fireplace on a cushy sofa with a warm mug of tea. Well, that's not a bad trade for a little more reading now, is it?

But lately I've been forcing myself to stop and smell the roses. OK, not roses -- maybe hemlock. Or pine. Or clean Alaskan air. Whatever. -- Be Where You Are. My mantra. And currently, my mantra involves me lying under trees, for however long I need to do that.

So, at some point in the hike (usually after I've been out a while), I'll come to a spot that seems especially lovely. A good place for a rest. And I'll do my best to rearrange my gear so I'm less likely to get snow down my neck or in my pants, and I'll just lie back on the snow. And look up.

I prepare to endure the inevitable dog-panic for those first few seconds as the greyhound mix, in particular, simply cannot understand why I would choose to stop moving for even a moment unless I'm injured, so she pounces around my head in some vague CPR-like movements. The husky mix also saunters over just to see if there are snacks involved. When both have satisfied themselves that I am neither dying/dead nor noshing, they quickly find some tiny woodland creatures (real or imaginary) to unleash their Inner Predators upon.

And … I just …. lie there.

I look up at the branches and marvel on their beauty, watching them sway in the breeze. I enjoy the soughing of the wind. I enjoy remembering there is such a word as "soughing." I quietly appreciate not hearing humans or human sound, other than the occasional jingle of one of my dogs' collars.

I let my entire weight press into the earth -- it's solid, it supports me no matter how heavy I try to make myself. -- In Life, I feel sometimes as if I'm always holding my body ready to flee at a moment's notice, never quite entirely relaxing into rest. But the earth has my back, literally in this case, and I can settle down into her with confidence.

Of course, in time, something almost inevitably interrupts the reverie. Usually, it's other humans coming up or down the trail -- I could let them go by & resume my meditation but usually by then the moment has passed; I'm not yet so Zen as to be able to recall it quickly or with grace. -- Sometimes it's the cold of the winter earth creeping up to remind me how vulnerable I am as a human out here in the big bad world and maybe I should just scurry back to my little den in the big city. -- Come to think of it, I may be getting a bit peckish.

So I gather up my belongings, desecrating the moment just long enough to snap a few photos with my phone, and head back to the car, dogs dashing ahead, having been glad for the quiet time at the playground but happy to be once more back on the move.

Meanwhile, I'm learning to embrace a new meaning of being out on the earth -- these days, less treadmill, more chapel.

My Aurora

It seems every time I tell someone I live in Alaska, their reaction inevitably includes some remark about how cold and/or dark it must be in winter. I'm not exactly sure what people think goes on up here, way up north, though I guess Hollywood has its own ideas: 

While it's certainly true that Alaskan winters can be daunting, they have rarely seemed to me significantly colder or darker than those of other places I've lived. 

The memories I have of the winters spent in Madison, Wisconsin, for example, can't help but include those daily long (looooong) walks from the parking lot to the vet school, and the suffering inflicted by skin-peeling windchill in the dead of winter. At least Anchorage doesn't really have wind. 

Still, 20-below is 20-below.

Nevertheless, one of the boons of the Alaskan winter darkness is the occasional appearance of the northern lights, the Aurora Borealis. Reflections in the Earth's atmosphere of solar flares and winds, Aurora's fantastic light show can vary almost infinitely in color and form.  

Many years ago, when I lived in Fairbanks, the clear skies of its broad river basin setting provided the perfect palette on which Aurora could craft her magnificent nocturnes. 

Since moving to Anchorage, however, I've discovered that the combination of increased cloud cover and the interference of its "big city" lights interferes with the ability to see the Lights, even if they are out.

Nevertheless, yesterday morning as I was letting the dogs out into the yard before I left for work, I saw a hint of a smudge in the clear northern sky, nothing much more than small faint cloud… but the cloud was vertical. And pale green.

I hurried to fetch my coat and hat to stand on the back patio and was soon rewarded by the familiar green & white ribbons skittering across the sky. They didn't last long, maybe only ten minutes or so (I'd heard they were spectacular around 2am, when I'd been fast asleep), but worth every minute of the reminder of sheer diversity Nature's beauty has to share with us, if only we open our eyes.

Still, in Alaska, Aurora-viewing is something of a competitive sport. Everyone, it seems, has a better story than yours -- Auroras that were brighter, longer, or more colorful than whatever you happen to be talking about. The ribbing is all good-natured, however, since it seems the underlying appreciation for our good fortune cannot be denied, even by the most curmudgeonly of sourdoughs.

"I remember, back in 1952…"

I realize the futility in attempting to convey my favorite Aurora experiences, since they're visual experiences, only in my own head. But it's fun to recall them, and it's a good excuse for me to show some beautiful photographs which really aren't so different from the Lights I've seen in the past. So, without further ado, here are 

My Top Five Auroras:

#5 - The Red Aurora (Anchorage, ca. January 1999):

Most Auroras are green & white, but sometimes other colors peek in, maybe at the very tips of the bigger flares. One evening, my husband & I saw a shimmer in the night sky as we were driving home from a movie, so we kept driving, to access a darker area of town with fewer streetlights. That way, we could get a better view. We were rewarded with a display of lights almost entirely red in color -- very rare. (Bonus memory: The only other person in the park was another woman who'd also come out to watch the lights, and I'll never forget that the trunk of her car was wrapped entirely in duct tape. Très Alaskan.)

#4 - Love under the Lights (Fairbanks, February 1998):

My first winter in Alaska found me falling for a guy whom I later married. One of our first dates involved walking the dogs one night, and the Aurora came out while we were walking. Kissing him under the beautiful lights, sharing our own heat in that Fairbanks-cold night, is a magical memory I'll always cherish (even though the husband in question has gone by the wayside).

#3 - Early season Lights (Fairbanks, August 1997):

During my first year out of vet school, I worked for a practice that had an after-hours on-call service. I was terrified at least half the time I got called in, worried I would encounter a condition I had no idea how to treat, and having to handle it all on my own. So after one particularly harrowing adventure with a dog who'd been on the losing end of a tussle with a porcupine (Eighty-pound dog, too keyed-up for the anesthetic to work properly, swinging his quill-infested face around while I tried to pull the quills…)

… it was actually dark as I was driving home, Fairbanks' legendary "midnight sun" finally, in August, willing to go to bed for a few hours each night. That was my very first Aurora sighting, a single vertical ribbon extending from the western horizon to the skies above my head. It didn't last long, but its beauty reassured me I had chosen the right place for my new home.

#2 - Skies Ablaze (Cooper Landing, March 2009): 

A friend was getting married the next day in Cooper Landing, some eighty miles south of Anchorage. Rather than make an early-morning drive, my husband & I decided we would take the dog south & spend the night in a local motel, then get up and sneak out for a quick backcountry ski outing before the wedding the next morning. -- Letting the dog out at 1am, I walked into the motel parking lot and found myself under a sky ablaze with the most vigorous, spectacular Aurora display I've ever seen. For hours, the sky was covered from horizon to horizon with ribbons and waves, flames and spirals. I'd always heard people say the Aurora makes a sound, but that was the first and only time I'd heard the electric hissing attributed to her most lively displays. That the Lights preceded my friends' union into a life to be spent together could hardly be interpreted as anything other than a good sign.

#1 - A Bittersweet Farewell (My backyard, Anchorage, September 2011):

Some friends & I had gathered to bid a bittersweet farewell to our friend, Nicolette, who was returning to New Zealand with her family. It seemed unlikely she'd ever make her way back to us from so long a distance, so I think many of us held in our hearts the sadness that we might never see her again. As we sat around the bonfire, recounting her many Alaskan escapades -- including, but not limited to, the challenges of adapting her beloved 1967 Mustang to the harsh Alaskan climate  -- Aurora showed her colors. Again, a rarity to see Lights in Anchorage at all, but to have them shine so brightly and for so long, while sitting in the comfort of a deck chair in my own midtown backyard, surrounded by beloved friends, seemed a gift to all of us and a fond farewell from Alaska herself to our beloved friend.

Like most things in Life, I guess, Aurora is either there or it's not. You can appreciate it or not: I remember my husband gently shaking me awake one night as he returned home late from his restaurant. He whispered excitedly, "The lights are out." Very tired and reluctant to leave my warm bed, I muttered, "Are they green?" "Yes," he replied. "Then I'm not coming out," I petulantly replied, miffed to be woken for something as "mundane" as ONLY a green Aurora!

But as a backdrop for Life's other adventures -- the wedding of a friend, falling in love, the emerging confidence of a young woman exploring the world -- Nature certainly does a remarkable job of providing some spectacular embellishments.