And I find myself having trouble writing about him. About the angles of his body complimenting my curves perfectly. The way we dissolve into giggle fits just by exchanging glances. How his hand regularly reaches for mine, like he needs to be touching me to be sure I’m there. That this is real. That we exist. Here. Together. Finally.
I catch myself wondering if I ought to be jaded. How the broken promise of forever-love should leave me unbelieving. Instead I let him put his hands on either side of my face and kiss me deeply upon greeting. I let my knees get weak and my face to ache from smiling.
There is nothing wrong with inviting love back in.
In the morning he gets up for work and leaves me sleeping. Twisting in the sheets that belong to him. Hours later I climb into the shower. The smell of his shampoo engulfing me in the steam. I breathe deep and boggle at my good fortune of just existing.
He is the first one from the new time. From the beginning years. The first one to meet me after the medication is settled. After I rediscover my own spine and plant my own feet. He is the first one to only see the scars and hear the stories. To not have the memory of the woman I used to be. To not remember how empty I seemed.
We recreate ourselves through others, don’t we? And this time I know how I want to do things differently. So when we’re scared we tell each other, just like when we’re pleased. I stand firm on what’s important to me. I make time to see my friends. I keep writing. I talk to my family. I remember to believe there is nothing wrong with me.
Really believe.
This man does not know the way I pulled my knees to my chest and sobbed about living. He does not know the suffering. And I can see it in the way he looks at me. I am not broken or fragile. I am not a time bomb, a loose cannon. I am not the person I used to be. I’m… Happy. Grateful. Ecstatic and thriving.
He asks if I’ve been writing. I respond the same way I have every time someone has asked me since January, “No, but I really should. No, but I’d like to.” As if it is just a thing I can add to my list and cross off when I come to it. Nestle it down in between reworking an entire business and trips to Seattle on the weekends. Tack it on to the end of an already existent line of tasks to be completed. Make time for it in between planning a divorce celebration and figuring out where the hell we go from here.
It’s not like that. It’s more like putting all that down and unearthing something completely different. Because if I start writing, I’m going to write about Mason. And if I do that…
Everything aches. I do a good job with blocking, with dealing, with harnessing all that heartbreak into motivation. My mental health professionals, my friends, my family, they all remark on how well I’ve been doing “all things considered”, but they neglect to consider writing. Because if I haven’t written about it, I haven’t done much of anything with it.
So let’s do something with it.
I made him say the word. The big, scary one with the sharp edges. I made him say “divorce” before I would acknowledge what he was saying. It meant all my fighting hadn’t been enough to keep him. That talks about how I would change, how we could change hadn’t been convincing enough to sway him. That I’d failed irreparably at the one thing in my life I wanted to be good at: being married to Mason. I’d lost him. Curtain falls.
Sitting on the steps of the once-ours, now-his apartment building I sobbed for a solid hour. In the days following every mention of future plans, of children, of growth, of building something brought me to tears. Nothing was beautiful without him. This is not the life I had wanted to live. Over and over in therapy those words would be repeated, “You didn’t ask for this. This was not your plan.” And despite all my resistance, I finally gave into the feeling that it’s different being left than leaving.
Here I was–handed something I had no desire for–being told, “This is what you get.” It happens all the time, I know. But my partner was supposed to be my constant and he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t.
The urge was strong to hate him. To vilify. Instead, I pulled out all the reasons getting divorced was the right thing for both of us. I told myself that this was good, was better. That the trees that grow back after the fire are stronger than the ones before. Then I remembered that when we first met he called me “wildfire” and I break down again. Break down. Then continue on again.
Most every morning I get out of bed and I smile in the mirror and I begin my day with confidence. And we plan a party to celebrate the end of one chapter, the beginning of the next. I even buy a new dress. Mostly things feel just fine. We joke about June 15th being the best day of my life.
But you don’t just turn off love like that. Don’t just turn the wheel and plot a new path. I sewed him into every fiber of my life. And though we know I shouldn’t have, I still have to go back. Go back and pull out each stitch made in the last five years. It will leave a hole there. There is no fixing it.
In time I won’t notice it as much. As we get more chapters in our book each one seems less significant alone. And in time I will stop checking my phone and email, hoping he’s tried to make contact. I will stop missing him at family dinners and stop reaching across the bed for him in the middle of the night. Eventually I will stop thinking of how to tell him first when something exciting happens. Before I know it, he will fade off into the edges. But that won’t change the fact that I never wanted this.
That I still don’t. Not this. And–you know what?–I didn’t even know that until I wrote it.
Yet this is where I am. Standing shoulder to shoulder with some of the most important people in my life. We problem solve and take measurements. Smooth the edges of each piece of clay. Learn a new trade like the curves of a new lover’s body. And I think, “This is it, kid. This is your constant now.”
We know these feelings. We recognize them. We remember just how to scream into pillows and sob on staircases. We’ve been here often. We’ll return before we’re ready.
At dinner Mark stops me when I say, “I think I’ll be fine.” He holds steady until I meet his eyes.
“No. There is no ‘think’,” he says gruffly, “I know you’ll be fine. Better than fine. I know it.”
I feel almost guilty for believing him. For acknowledging the fact this is just another one of those moments we go through, that go through us. That we always walk away from. Every time.
Over and over I repeat the story. Each time becoming further removed from it. Until it’s nothing but a monologue I recite when prompted. Something I can put down and walk away from. Like the dress I threw in the trash because I was wearing it when Mason told me he wanted a divorce. Pretending I could separate myself from the statement by separating myself from the clothing.
No, it may not be that easy, but it is similar, isn’t it? We hand the words off to anyone who will listen, keeping only a tiny piece of them in a coat pocket to be discovered next season. And bit by bit time softens the edges of everything. Staircases worn down after thousands of years of footsteps. We do not remember what they looked like when they were new. That is not what makes them precious.
Ruby Pipes 