Good News

The Good News

Thich Nhat Hahn

The good news

they do not print.

The good news

we do print.

We have a special edition every moment

that we need you to read.

The good news is that you are alive

and the linden tree is still there

standing firm in the harsh winter.

The good news is that you have wonderful eyes

to touch the blue sky.

The good news is that

your child is there before you,

and your arms are available.

Hugging is possible.

They print only what is wrong.

Look at each of our special editions.

We always offer the things that are not wrong.

We want you to benefit from them

and help protect them.

The dandelion is there by the sidewalk,

smiling its wondrous smile,

singing the song of eternity.

Lo! You have ears capable of hearing it.

Bow your head.

Listen to her.

Leave behind your world of sorrow

and preoccupation

and get free.

The latest good news

is that you can do it.

* * *

During the summer of 2020 I was one of many people walking laps around our city neighborhood. My husband, a city bus driver, had just gone back to work. I was frantically worried about our health, his lack of insurance, and catching COVID-19, I needed to burn off the extra anxiety.

The Good News was that I had space to do it. 

On the way back from one such walk, I noticed a dandelion growing from the brick retaining wall. I looked at it for a long time, snapped a picture, and sent it to my husband. “If this isn’t,” I said, “an admonition to thrive wherever we are planted, I do not know what is.” 

Little did I know it, but I was hearing that dandelion’s song of eternity at that moment. 

Dandelions are a remarkable plant that seems unremarkable. For example, one thing that we all know about dandelions is their ability to thrive where they are planted. We see them in pavement cracks and brick walls. We pull them from our gardens’ deep soil. They are very common and they bloom where they are planted. 

Where have we been planted? 

Beloveds, right now I feel very much like the dandelion growing out of a sidewalk or brick wall, trying to sing the song of eternity into a world filled with sirens. But while the soil here may not be deep, it is rich. The good news is that it is enriched by this spiritual community, by my friends and family, by my volunteer work and by daily my spiritual practices. 

What enriches your dirt? 

The other interesting thing about dandelions is that they are edible–flowers, greens, and roots. It’s funny to think of this ubiquitous (and for some, irritating) sign of summer, as a nutritional powerhouse, but it is high in vitamins and calcium. They’re also delicious.  

Let’s pause and consider this briefly. What we roundly consider a nuisance flower or a pest is food not only for our beloved pollinators but for us as well. 

Consider too one of the most frustrating parts of our lives today–the knowledge that we are each one person standing against a tide of special interests and a broken political system that will sell us and our children, and our children’s children down the river for a quarter of a percent increase in profits or votes. In the face of this power we, like the dandelions, are common and perhaps a little unremarkable. 

The good news is that you too can feed a community. In my Catholic childhood we called these acts of spiritual and physical feeding the corporal works of mercy. Feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, visit the sick & the imprisoned, and bury the dead. We know how to do these things. We can recognize them even in their less obvious forms in our community and each of these acts is a  note in the song of eternity. 

The final thing I want to say about dandelions is that they spread prolifically. Each head contains hundreds–did you know that–hundreds of seeds. Every time we make a wish on these little weeds, we ensure that they will continue to grow into the next season. 

Here we are, rooted in this church, with the ability to feed those around us, and the good news–the best news–is that these actions plant seeds of hope, love, and grace in the community around us. They ensure that our notes in this song of eternity are heard, and lead us to the next movement. 

Beloveds, may our lives be representations of the good news. May we grow here, in this soil in which we planted, provide food to others, and let our deeds carry forth into eternity. 

May it be so, and amen. 

Share Your Love with Me

 The Queen of Soul is belting it out in the apartment tonight. 

I can't decide on a specific album so I cue up the first one I ever bought: Aretha Franklin's 30 Greatest Hits. It's been a rough day at the office, so I really wanted to hear "Respect," and I'll see how I feel as the album winds on. 

I go on cooking and tidying things up until a song comes on that brings back my first marriage so vividly that I have to stop and remind myself to breathe. 

Oh how lonesome (oh how lonesome)

You must be (you must be)

It's a shame (shame, shame)

If you don't share your love with me. 

I listened to this song on an endless loop while the ex and I were breaking up. I was so lonely and I kept thinking that he must be lonely, too. 

* * *

"I think that this is what people meant by "adulting.""

I'm on a videocall with one of my dearest friends. I've been telling her about how everyone I know really seems to be going through it lately. Divorce, unemployment, issues with their health, issues with their parents health, discipline problems with their kids, it's just everything all at once. And it's hard to know when someone has enough space to hear the minor tragedies that are going on in your life. 

Community has been a buzzword for so long now that I think it has lost all of its meaning. We say that we know it is life-affirming and life-changing, but I haven't been able to build an actual community since the first few years after college. We got wrapped up in our jobs and lives and went our separate ways. I understand that life is like that. We love people for a season or a lifetime and whichever it is, it was worth loving them.

But I long for real community. 

* * *

I was laid off in December. 

It was awful. I was called into the office one day and told that the organization was 3.1M dollars in debt and that there was no way out. We were being laid off because they weren't sure they would be able to meet payroll for another week. We were laid off because of incomprehensible financial mismanagement. The people responsible for that mismanagement still had their six figure salaries and probably had a very merry Christmas watching The Christmas Carol. 

I digress. 

Getting laid off is one of those things that you can't really conceptualize until it happens. I killed it at that job. I raised our entire fundraising goal for the year in six months. I loved my boss. I loved my work. I thought that I landed at the organization where I was going to stay until I at least finished school. Having that yanked out from me was so disorienting that I took three weeks just to process it. I could not fathom going from having a good job where things were going really well to having no job, and not because of anything I had done wrong. There were very few people I could talk to about it. David bore most of the burden then and now, because my emotions have become even more volatile than normal. When I do see people I love there so much pressure to be positive about my job search, because no one wants to hear you rant about how middle management creates jobs for themselves by making the job search worse for applicants. 

Or whatever tear I'm on that week. 

* * * 

My longing for community is wrapped up with a concept I fucking despise. 

"Having enough spoons." 

I understand that sometimes we're carrying so much in our private lives that we can't carry any more. But I am also in the process of becoming an interreligious chaplain who wants to do hospice work. I know firsthand that grief and stress shared are grief and stress lightened. My favorite minister once said that "Asking for help is self care and giving help is community care."

I have never forgotten that sermon. 

I don't know if this is a me thing. Do you all feel disconnected and vaguely unhappy? Am I just unlikable and can't form the community I want? Is the community that I long for just non-existent anymore?

That's not to say that we should all be willing to take on everyone's everything all the time. Of course not. Boundaries are important. But if we can't put a card in the mail, show up unannounced with a hotdish, or offer to take someone's kids for two hours so they can go on a date, what's the point? 

* * *

I've been relistening to a lot of music I haven't heard in awhile. 

It's been a lot of what Spotify has dubbed "Millennial Post Rock." I've listened to The Crane Wife album on repeat while writing papers. I play The Postal Service and make baked ziti for David's lunch. I just sit and listen to For Emma, Forever Ago. 

This is completely embarrassing, but the reason I am revisiting all these albums is because I feel like I did in my 20s. Everything is too uncertain, all of these life experiences are new and overwhelming, and IamjusthavingtoomanyfeelingsandIcannotdeal. 

Christ, I turn 40 next year. 

In the midst of this review of the tail end of my emo years, I let David have a turn at the radio. Somewhere in his mix a cover of "Share Your Love with Me" comes up. 

I'm drawn back to those months before my divorce, but only for a moment. I keep thinking about the line "Oh how lonesome you must be." Every time I have told someone "I don't have the spoons" or had someone cry when I drop off tater tot lentil hotdish or allthefuckingfeelings of worthless and despair I have felt during unemployment come over me. 

It's a lot. It's almost too much. 

But I realize again that a lot and almost too much are exactly what I want. I want to listen to you complain about your horrible Boomer boss or the price of houses or your dog chewing up your $3,000 dental guard. I want drawings from your kids and to bring you cookies when didn't get the job you wanted. I want to be in this horrible phase of "adulting" with you. I want to share our love and grief and joy with one another. 

Maybe we can all feel a little bit less lonesome. 

Grief

 I have a print hanging in my bathroom that's held an outsized significance in my life for awhile. 

It's a quote from a Louise Erdrich book that I love. 

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will break you with its yearning. You have to love. you have to feel. It is the reason you are here on Earth. You are here to be swallowed up. 

Mostly it just sits there on the wall, placed inconveniently for anyone to really notice while they're peeing or washing their hands, but I know it's there. And occasionally I stop and read it and think of when I bought it and how my life has changed. Or I'll read it mindlessly while I brush my teeth. 

Sometimes, though, I read it and my heart breaks open. 

* * *

David and I have started going to church.

I can't remember how it happened. I know that we were both yearning for something. Community was a part of it. A lot of my friendships have changed dramatically during COVID and before COVID. But it was more than just looking for a beloved community for me. "My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord" says Mary in one of my favorite bible passages. "My spirit rejoices in God, my savior."

God and I have not been on speaking terms since 2012, but my soul has been proclaiming something recently. 

So David and I have started going to church. We attend a Universalist Church not far from where we live. 

In graduate school, Unitarians were easy targets for derision because "They don't believe in anything." I made this argument as much as any of my peers, and what an arrogant, judgmental little shit I was. I didn't realize how badly people who didn't have my confidence in the One True Church still needed a place for spirituality, hope, and love. Now I find myself regularly attending Unitarian services. 

Who says the universe doesn't have a sense of humor?

Yesterday we had a Service of Remembrance. It was the first in-person one this community has had in over two years (everyone is asked to be vaccinated and masked for the entirety of the service, and we were in N95s, so don't get sassy). The service had some aspects that felt odd to a recovering Catholic (speaking your losses to a stone and dropping it in a bowl of water, profligately having conversations with your neighbors about loss mid-service) but weren't any odder than almost any Catholic ritual I could name. Near the end of the service there was a litany of the people we have lost in the past year, and the congregation lit a candle in remembrance of every person. 

I have never grieved communally. My beloved grandmother died in May of 2020 and I was stone faced throughout her entire service. When I came back to Minnesota I screamed with grief. I cried and retreated from David and held on to my grief like a weight. The worst of it passed. 

It always does. 

So when I found myself in the midst of a bunch of very earnest people speaking about loss so openly, I was terribly intimidated. Afterall, the only thing I'd lost was a beloved pet. Listening to people speak the names of their loved ones who had died made anything I've experienced in the past two year seem mild. 

At the end of the service, a little embarrassed, I went up the altar and lit a candle for my beloved kitty. And in the act of lighting and thinking her name, something odd happened. 

My heart broke open. 

* * *

We've lost so much in the past two years. 

Families and friendships. Pets. A civic society. Live theater and music. Jobs we loved. Time. Illusions. That teacher we really wanted our kid to experience. A sense of normalcy. Hugs and shared laughter and warmth. Maybe our conceptions of ourselves. 

I've lost a a grandmother I adored, a pet who got me through difficult times, getting to watch my adopted nieces and nephews grow, the choice about whether or not I'll be a parent, my sense of smell and taste, months to long COVID, a little bit of my sanity, the joy I used to take in my work, more things than I can name. 

And in the act of lighting that small taper candle for a cat who died in November, my heart breaks. 

It breaks and it breaks and it breaks. 

And then it's all there. All the complicated, overwhelming, messy feelings that I've been carrying with me for two long years now. 

Probably for longer than that, if I'm being honest.

Somehow, it's easier in this place. Perhaps it's the message of the day. That the kindness we hold for one another is the only thing that is left after grief. It might be that quote from my bathroom, rattling around in my head and reminding me that these complicated feelings are the reason I'm here. It could just be that it was a cathartic experience and my brain is hit with a wave of feel-good chemicals. 

What I think it is--no, what I believe it is--is that doing this together has somehow made things easier. That speaking our losses, whether to a stone or a neighbor, and lighting our candles for a person or a pet has made this act of grieving lighter. Grieving communally has created a place of compassion, empathy, and love that is so necessary and so lacking right now. 

As we leave I take David's hand and smile. "I'm glad we did that."

"Yeah, me too."

And my heart begins to mend. 

I Fall in Love Too Easily

When David slips into the shower with me I almost burst into tears. 

I've just been diagnosed with COVID-19 and it feels like four hours after the test results come back, all the symptoms show up at once. I'm so tired I feel like I might just collapse on the bottom of the tub. My stomach is roiling and I've been coughing so hard my lungs hurt. 

"Baby," he asks, concerned. "Are you okay?"

I wrap my arms around him and cry quietly into his shoulder. 

"I'm so much better now that you're here." 

* * *

"I don't know! It's not one of those things you just say to people!"

"That is literally the dumbest thing you have ever said."

"Why?"

"Because you aren't 16. Do you think if you say it to the wrong person it'll lose its meaning?"

"Yeah, kinda."

I roll my eyes so hard I can practically hear it. 

"Look at me. I got married to the wrong person. I still loved him. I still love David now. It's not like I wasted all my love on my ex."

"Yeah, but that's different."

"How?"

"It just is."

"You're an idiot."

"And you're a prig."

"Well, that's settled. Whose turn is it to pay?"

* * *

When I was eighteen, a close friend of mine lived, at least during the school week, with my family. 

As far as I remember it, she came home with me one night after school, stayed over, and just lived with my family off and on for awhile. I had to shared a room with my younger brother (sleeping on the bottom bunk, no less), but that was the worst part of it.

We did, or (didn't) do our homework together. When things went south with our boyfriends we stayed up for hours talking. I learned how to tell when she was sleep-walking and when my older brother found out that I forgot to tell Mom about her birthday, he deep-fried her some mushrooms. 

She didn't have the heart to tell him she hated mushrooms and Mom was so mad she could have whacked me with a wooden spoon. 

Years later I was telling a friend about that part of my childhood and he asked "Weren't you jealous?"

"Why would I be jealous?"

"That your parents loved her as much as they loved you."

I still think about that conversation. 

* * *

I have never had a problem falling in love.

I like to joke that my closest friends are people that I've pined for over the years who never materialized into friendships. I've had some issues falling out of love over the years (dear god, the amount of time I cried over my high school boyfriend), but the falling for someone has always been the easy part. 

I'm always shocked when friends (in their 30s, no less!) claim to be unable to say "I love you" to a new partner. 

What on Earth do you have to lose?

* * *

I don't see a lot of people during COVID-19 lockdowns. 

It's been crushing on everyone, I know, but I'm really struggling a lot now that cold weather has pushed us indoors and made seeing friends impossible. 

I have one or two that are in our bubble and a few I don't mind regularly videochatting with and while it's not the same, it always helps. 

The day after I manage to wrangle a visit or have a particularly good conversation or David and I connect in a deep way I do the same thing. I take a special red china mug down from the cabinet. I make a cup of hot cinnamon tea and drink it while reflecting on and giving thanks for all the love in my life. 

Call it prayer or magic or good luck, but the love in my life keeps growing. 

* * *

David and I have spent over 6,000 hours together in a 600 square foot apartment. 

I still love him. 

It's one of those things that slightly surprises me when I think about it. Falling in love has never been a problem. I am profligate in declaring my love. I'm just not terribly good at staying in love.

See: My marriage that fell apart after less than two years. 

I hate sharing space with anyone. I need long stretches alone to feel like a human being. The only things I've ever allowed to share a bed with me on a consistent basis are my cats. 

It's not just that I still love him, it's that I'm happy with him here. My life is better with him in it and my home feels more like home with him here. He is calm and kind and keeps me grounded. I'm learning how to disagree with someone you live with and not have it be a three-day fight. He is the only one I want to see when I find out I'm sick. 

What matters most, though, is the feeling that love isn't scarce. It isn't something to hold onto a guard jealously against other people. There's room for love to grow in this relationship. 

And that makes every day worth a cup of hot cinnamon tea.  

David

David and I have been dating for almost 18 months and making crispy tofu still eludes me. 

It's maddening. 

His current shifts have him working until late--8:00 or 8:30PM and I take a lot of pride in having something delicious on the table when he comes home. Eggplant parmesan, homemade root vegetable pot pie, stuffed squash and mashed potatoes--anything that gives me something to do in the evenings and makes it so he has something to look forward to after a long shift on a snowy evening. 

Tonight I've been trying to make a crispy tofu stir fry and the tofu turns out fine, I guess. But it's not what I wanted for him. 

It upsets me more than it should. 

* * *

When I'm feeling truthful, I'll admit I knew something was wrong in my last relationship. 

Of course I did. There were so many indications that my ex and I didn't belong together, that we weren't really compatible. I briefly thought about calling off our wedding about a month before it happened, but I felt like I was too far into it. 

I wasn't brave enough to admit that we were failing. 

I lived on comfort food during the years with my ex. Hotdish, pasta carbonara, anything that was a simple carb. Anything that was both comforting and that I didn't actually care how it turned out. 

Just thinking about my diet now makes me shudder and realize two things. 

I was deeply in love. 

I was profoundly unhappy. 

* * *

"Jesus, it's hot in here."

"Yeah, the air-conditioner has never been very good. Do you need anything?"

"Water?"

He gets out of bed and heads toward the kitchen. Before he gets there he doubles back and puts on a record.

"I think you'll like this."

He turns on an artist from his hometown--someone I've never heard before. I space out for much of the record in the way you do when you're happy and in love and in the moment. 

Then there's a lyric that catches me. It's funny how that happens, isn't it? 

I got a tenderhearted lover who does me good.

He's a little rough around the edges but don't let that fool you.

This is the most content I've been in years. 

***

I've been hesitant to write too much about David. 

I wrote a lot about the ex and our relationship and I'm superstitious. I haven't wanted to jinx what I have. 

I've also spent a lot of time thinking about my marriage vs. my relationship with David. 

I'm not going to do yet another post-mortem of my marriage. My ex doesn't deserve that kind of thought. What I will say is that I feel like I have a partner in everything. I have someone who has my back and who loves me, even on our worst days. This is the most loved, supported, and . . .  I don't know, seen I've ever felt. 

I think a lot about that song he played me when we first started dating.

Never gonna be perfect, but I'm still gonna try. 

Closest thing I'll ever get is you by my side. 

We've been through such a ridiculous, maddening, infuriating year. Between COVID and layoffs and elections, I feel like there's so much that could have--should have gone wrong in a relatively new relationship. And we're still together. I'm still deeply in love and profoundly happy. 

I still give a shit about how the tofu turns out. 

Magic

David wakes me up.

It's not an unusual thing. He's usually up by 5AM and comes in to kiss me goodbye before he leaves. Usually I'll wake up just enough to have a conversation with him I'll forget by the time my alarm goes off. Sometimes I'll say something insane and make him laugh before he leaves ("Why are you putting catheters in the cats?" was one of his favorites).

This morning somewhere between telling me about taking out the garbage and doing the laundry, my eyes drift open and I grab his hand.

"I was dreaming about magic," I tell him.

* * *

"I thought you always wanted, like, a billion kids."

An old acquaintance from college likes to throw this in my face whenever she sees me reacting to a baby crying in public or a toddler having a meltdown on public transit.

I'm never reacting for the reason she thinks. 

I've tried everything I can to get her to stop talking about it, to stop making the joke. There were lots of things I wanted in my early 20s and there were lots of things I thought I wanted in my early 20s.  This is a small hurt, but an old one, and I've learned how to deal with it.

Sometimes it's easier to bear someone's unthinking cruelty than explain why it's cruel.

* * *

When I was a kid I used to fall asleep pretending that I could do magic. 

I would imagine that I was living a giant treehouse and that I was a princess of the woods. On nights when I couldn't sleep I would imagine riding on my oversized wolf, followed by my size-shifting cat. We were adventuring out to find and destroy the Tomes of Black Magic, which were scattered throughout the mundane and magical worlds. I fought every kind of monster I could think of, but those confrontations were always physical or besting the monster using my intellect. Magic was always only used when I returned to the treehouse. 

Magic was about creating.

* * *

"What are you thinking about?" 

We're waiting for the number twenty-three on our way to a movie. I've been watching a little girl walking through the twilight with her father, puttering along next to him and singing to herself. 

"I just feel a little wistful." 

He sees where I'm looking. "Yeah?" 

I nod. "It's hard, knowing that it's an experience I'm never going to have. I was once watching some friends, the ones you met last week? I remember watching them playing with their daughter and realizing that I'd never feel what they were feeling." I pause. "And I know, I know that I'm making the right decision, but sometimes I want it so badly it feels physical." 

I stop, expecting some platitude about how sometimes correct decisions aren't easy, or that there's always time to change my mind, or any of a hundred other things a dozen different people have told me. 

He just squeezes my hand. "I know."

* * *

"Here, take this," David whispers, handing me his handkerchief. 

We're seeing a play by one of my favorite theatre companies in the area. Their stuff always destroys me. It's beautiful and moving and always makes me cry. This particular show is about magic and authenticity and love and has me sobbing, loudly, during the final five minutes. 

It's also, I think, about illusions. The lies we tell ourselves to keep ourselves safe from reality. 

That's really what's making me cry.

* * *

David and I can't have kids. 

I suppose the more correct thing to say is that we can't have kids without a lot of expensive and invasive medical intervention that neither of us would want. 

I got a little weepy just writing that. 

Here's the thing. I don't know if I've ever seriously wanted a child. I agonized about it a lot in my late 20s. The logical decision, given my mental health history and income and a feelings about actually raising a child, is to not have one. It's a decision that I'm comfortable with about 90% of the time. 

I'm sure I don't have to explain the difference between making a decision and having it made for you. 

It's oddly devastating to know that we can't have something I was pretty sure I never wanted in the first place. David is the first person I would have ever considered having a baby with and it's a choice we'll never really be able to make. 

Which makes things complicated.

* * *

So here's the part where I'll be comparing motherhood and pregnancy to my feelings on magic and creation. Or having one of those uplifting moments in memoir writing where I realize that I can channel my creative impulses to writing or my work or volunteering or something. 

Yeah, no. 

Because the thing is that if suddenly ohmygodmagicisreallyreal I wouldn't magic myself a baby (I've read folklore, I know how that one ends). I also wouldn't magic myself into complete serenity about my choices and become a renowned writer. 

Well, maybe that last part. 

Now, at thirty-five instead of five I realize that magic isn't about creation. It isn't even about choice. It's about the illusion, the ability to convince yourself that you ever had any fucking option.

It's another in a series of grim but true revelations I've had in my mid-30s. But even that realization doesn't really change things. 

I still wake up dreaming of magic. 

Daddy

"Are you still writing?"

It's a question from my father, at the end of a long weekend. 

I'm startled. I never knew that he read my writing, much less cared if I was still doing it. He's always been a fairly practical man, so I tell him about how much money I'm making, what's in my IRA, and how I'm hoping to buy a house in the next year. 

"Um, no. I don't really have time for it with the new-ish job and the commute, you know?"

He nods, and goes back to watching television. 

* * *

I barely cry at my grandmother's funeral. 

It was last weekend, right in the midst of of COVID-19 insanity, and for good or ill I go back to Wisconsin for her funeral. 

I guess I won't know if it was the right decision until fourteen days from now, when I find out if any of us contracted COVID. I'm not going to justify going aside from saying that she was a towering figure in my life, a surrogate parent when mine couldn't be there, and that I was as responsible as I could be. 

Anyway, I barely cry. As the designated Emotional One in the family, I'm a little shocked by my own stoniness. My cousins cry. My brothers cry. Even my father cries. 

I get the church giggles. 

* * *

"My psychologist thinks I have PTSD."

I'm out for dinner with my then-boyfriend. Things have been bad for awhile now, but I'm about to make them a lot worse. 

"Oh really?"

"Yeah."

When I try to change the topic by saying something I don't know, neutral, he ignores it and stares pensively into his sushi. 

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Well, she thinks I have PTSD."

It takes me a minute to process this. I've spent years working in domestic and sexual violence, lived through a sexual assault, and have sat with people dear to me while they relive their own trauma. I don't want to be insensitive, but his life has been deeply, profoundly normal. I hold my breath, tense and worried about what he's going to tell me.  

He sighs.

"The trauma of never living up to my father's expectations of me."

"PTSD because you don't live up to your father's expectations of you?"

"Yeah."

"Isn't that just the human condition?"

"Well, I also told her I wanted access to medical grade marijuana for recreation." 

We break up a few weeks later. 

* * *

I have a complicated relationship with my father. 

I mean, everyone does, and many of us in the same way, right? Daddy (and you could do a whole psychoanalysis on my calling him "Daddy" at 35, but I don't fucking care or have the energy for it).

Sorry, let me recalibrate. 

Daddy taught me a lot. How to hit a baseball and dribble a basketball (neither well, but not because of him). He taught me how to fish and the importance of a good work ethic. He taught me to give back to my community and a lot about generosity. 

I love him so much it hurts. 

My father has also hurt me deeply over the years. I can't (won't?) come out to my immediate family because he's said awful things about gay people during my life. He believes that financial success is a matter of work ethic and can be deeply dismissive about my personal experiences. 

I still love him so much it hurts.

* * *

I have never lived up to my father's expectations of me. 

I think about it a lot. When I'm flirting with a pretty girl. When I'm voting for a Socialist. When I take the attitude of "I'd rather pay someone to repair it." 

It's what I think about when I make it through my grandmother's funeral dry-eyed.  

It's only later, after a small breakdown in the car on the way to Minnesota that I start to see thing a little differently. My dry eyes during the funeral weren't a shortcoming, but a bit of his Stoicism that I managed to hold on to. His tears were, perhaps, the tiniest expression of a same emotions that I often feel every fucking day. 

I think a lot about that, and a lot about the question he asked me about writing. And perhaps this whole post is just one more attempt to have him be proud of me, even though he'll never read it. I honestly don't know. 

But I hope he is. 

Beginning

This apartment is different in so many ways.

To start, it's full of my stuff. My books, my art, and my mother's rocking chair are all out in the open again. Shelves of DVDs are not considered decoration. While it's certainly lived-in, it's also tidy and cozy.

I've only been here for a few weeks, but it already feels more like home than the apartment my ex and I shared for three years.

The biggest change is that there's music in the house again.

It's been over three years since I've been able to turn on an album without first having the check with my ex about whether or not it would overstimulate him. (it would) Or ask if he was planning to turn on television or a video game (he was). Or inquire about whether or not he wanted to talk about anything (he never did).

Granted, a lot of it is Patsy Cline, Billie Holiday, and with the occasional interlude into The Smiths when I'm feeling really awful.

It's a start.

* * *

Dating is a wasteland of human sadness. 

It's the same and not the same as it was before I met the ex. The apps are similar enough. The performative woke-ness is excruciatingly worse. Dick pics and gross men still abound. But I'm more comfortable with my sexuality and myself this time through. 

It's a long string of pleasant but not right dates until a friend introduces me to a friend. 

It is the perfect rebound relationship. 

Here's what makes it perfect. It's friendly and has some of of the best and most open communication I've ever had about expectations and sex and feelings. The conversations veer between flirting and arguing, and it's good to stretch those muscles again. The sex is intense and affirmative and helps me start to get over a lot of hurtful things my ex said. The bourbon is plentiful and high-quality. 

And when it's over, it's just . . . over. Friendly notes about Star Trek or careers occasionally, but there's no pining or long-term sadness.

It's a midpoint.

* * *

 I come home after a long and emotionally exhausting day to a clean house, reasonably calm and fed cats, and dinner on the stove. Amy Winehouse is on the radio singing the blues.

The new boyfriend is everything you'd want a new boyfriend to be. He's whattheheck silly and holyshit handsome and ohmygodareyoureal? kind. He tells me I'm gorgeous when I'm running errands in my old baseball hat and a grubby t-shirt. He tells me I'm gorgeous other times, too. He treats my parents to breakfast when they meet him. 

Every moment that I spend with him feels precious.

He gets me a glass of tea and does something to make me laugh. On the radio, Amy is singing about love being a losing game and in this moment, I don't even care if she's right. This doesn't feel like losing game. It doesn't feel like an ending.

It feels like a really good beginning.

Men are From . . .

"Oh my goodness, what a cute puppy! Is she yours?"

"If I say yes, will you pull my pants down?"

"Um, I just found out that I have to wait until April for the new Game of Thrones season, so that feels like enough disappointment for one day."

* * *

"This is the song Magic Cock Cake from our new album Smush 25:8."

I'm laughing so hard I'm almost peeing my pants. 

I'm grateful for a lot of things about my divorce. It was reasonably amicable, I got the cats, I lost twenty pounds, and I don't live in a house with anime scrolls and swords on the wall anymore. 

What I am most grateful for is that I seem to have won custody of my ex-husband's ex-girlfriend. 

He introduced us early on and we got on like a house on fire. She's well-read, likes to yell about feminism, loves to drink gin while yelling about feminism, and is a real weirdo. 

Oh, she also makes me laugh so hard I nearly pee my pants. 

I'm hanging out with her while she's on a lunch break and have been talking waaaaaay too loudly about my sex life. She decides to turn a recent story of my misadventures into a death metal album and launches into a rendition of the song on the spot.  

When I can finally stand up again she gets quietly serious. 

"Kel, you seem really happy. Like, really happy." She pauses. "I'm glad." 

Me too. 

* * *

"hey luv the black lipstick like my fav color cuz noone uses it"

"Thanks. It's actually a dark purple. I like my gothiness to be within the bell curve of work appropriate."

"u into latex?"

"I'm sorry?" 

"rubber?"

". . ."

"u goin 2 rubberball 2019? come suck my cock its so gooooood"

"Dude, if I wanted a mediocre dining experience, I'd just go to West End."

* * *

"You don't sound like yourself."

"I agree."

"Me too. "

Over the months, my makeup group chat has evolved into a lot more than makeup. 

It's become a place to talk about work and sex and relationships. I mean, it's also a lot of photos of me trying (and mostly failing, hilariously) to get the perfect cut crease, but it's more than that. 

"You sound mopey."

"^This."

"And most of the time you walk around like 'GIRLS I AM A BADASS AVENGING GODDESS WHO'S GOING TO CHANGE THE WORLD."

"She's right. So stop being so fucking hard on yourself."

"Yeah, mope if you need to, but tomorrow get up and be your BADASS SELF."

"And stop being so fucking had on yourself."

* * *

"hey girl. you look so sexxxxxy."

". . ."

"i'm looking for a virgin so we can para-bond without any drama."

"Well, unless you have a time machine, I'm afraid I'm not your girl." 

"well, your sexual partners shouldn't exceed three people."

". . ."

"you look like you'd be good at fucking."

"Know how I got that way?"

"yessssssssssss." 

"By fucking more than three people." 

* * *

There are six different women in four different timezones howling with laughter. 

I've just sent a screenshot of a text that a guy has sent me after ghosting on me two months ago, apologizing for ghosting on me and (we're pretty sure) trying to make a booty call. 

"Honestly," I say, "I'd have more respect if he just came out and said "Hey, I didn't want to date you, but wanna fuck?""

There's a lot more laughter and I am not the only one who decides to pour myself a gin and tonic. 

It's a pretty stereotypical divorcee thing to say, but for the most part I am so over men right now. 

There's a lot about life that is going really well. This is the happiest I've been in probably two years. My life feels like my own again, and almost none of that has to do with men. 

It does have a lot to do with women.

I've always known that female friendships are powerful as fuck. Women in my life have served as mentors and friends and unpaid therapists (sorry for the extra emotional labor).  I thought I knew how special they were and that I valued them enough. 

Yeah, right. 

The past year has been all of the best and all of the worst of my life. I have sobbed over tea and snuggled my goddaughters and vowed that I was never going to date again. I've screamed with laughter over terrible pickup lines and toasted to XX chromosomes and made another woman a cake as a thank you for getting me laid. 

The women in my life have gotten me through the hardest moments of my life. If I could I would bake every one of them a cake.

These dudes, though. 

Here

“Oh, I use “May I be patient, may I be I be strong, may I be kind to myself” pretty often. I like the rhythm of it.”

“That’s a good one.”

“I saw you have another one written on your mirror. What was it?”

“Fear is the mind-killer. I write it on my arm when I’m doing open water swims, too.”

“Isn’t that from Dune?”

“Yup.”

“You’re a weird girl.”

* * *

Everything feels muffled.

My husband has just told me he wants a divorce. While I’m at work. Over text message.

In the coming months I’ll spend a lot of time wondering what I did to deserve this. Surely I didn’t marry the kind of person who ends a four year relationship and a two year marriage via text. I must have done something wrong. Yes, that’s it. This was my fault. I did something to deserve this.

Nearly a year out, I still don’t understand how it happened, but I know that I didn’t deserve it.

What I do understand is how at that moment I felt myself slam something down over my heart.

“No,” I told it. “We don’t have time to fall apart now.”

I don’t remember a lot about the rest of that day. It was like being deeply sleep deprived. Or drunk. I’m reasonably certain I worked out. I know I finished the project I was working on before I went home. I remember that the muffled feeling took awhile to wear off.

When it comes to brain vs. heart, my brain is almost never in control. It spends the rest of the day asserting itself in time with its own beat.

I'm here. I'm here. I'm here.

* * *

“I know it seems like a silly exercise, but for someone who is perennially hard on themselves, it’s an important one.”

I groan. “Fine. I have grit.”

“What else?”

“I’m bright. I’m articulate when I’m not nervous. I’m adventurous.”

When she asks a chirpy “Anything else?” I remind myself that I am paying to be here.

“I care. A lot. All the time, actually. About everyone.”

“Yes. Warm-hearted. And open-hearted. Neither of those are bad things.”

I think about the jar over my heart and its quiet insistence that it exists.

I’m here. I’m here. I’m here.

“It doesn’t feel that way.”

* * *

In the months after the ex leaves me, I reach for everything.

I meditate. I reread my favorite books. I stop drinking and start exercising and eat more vegetables. I belt out my favorite musicals alone in my apartment. I write down things that feel like they’re helping. I consider getting them tattooed on my body and immediately put a one-year moratorium on any permanent body alteration.

Impossibly, I start dating again.

Somewhere in the midst of it, my protected heart finally breaks. And I keep it covered.

“No,” I tell it. “It doesn't matter how handsome or funny they are.We’re going to keep you here forever.”

* * *

I’m laughing so hard I can’t breathe.

It’s late and I should be asleep, but I’m up texting and a dumb play on words has set me off.

Life has been like this for a little while. It came on so gradually that I didn’t realize what was happening. I’ve stopped needing to meditate for an hour before bed to fall asleep. I’ve started reading again. While I’m still working out, but not frenetically, twice a day.

I find myself up late, texting and laughing.

One of my goals for myself during my divorce was to come through it with my warm heart still intact. I made that goal even after I secreted it away and told myself no one would ever get to see it again. It sounds contradictory, but I think even as I was falling apart I knew (believed, maybe) that it would happen.

I’m still surprised by how swiftly it did. Handsome and funny with a smart mouth certainly helped, but it's been more than that. Time, likely. Good friends, too. I won't lie, a few liberal applications of gin and jazz standards probably helped me along as well.

What shocks me more than the swiftness is how ready my heart is to try again, even when I know that things probably aren't going to work. It keeps asserting itself over and over again.

I’m here.

I’m here.

I’m here.

Delicate

"Can we pop in here?"

"Why?"

I feel like screaming. I feel like screaming a lot lately. 

"It's a bookstore I love. We're walking past it. We don't have anywhere to be." 

He's annoyed. He's been annoyed a lot lately. 

Bookstores are one of the few places I can go when my anxiety is really doing a number on me. There's something about tidy stacks of alphabetized books that I find calming. I abandon him to his simmering irritation near the door and browse the stacks. 

I don't actually want anything. I've got a houseful of books I don't have the attention span to read right now. I want a few moments of peace and calm before we head home to ignore one another for the rest of the weekend. When I return to the counter where he's scowling at his phone, I pause for a moment to read a framed print for sale. 

Months later, I'll wonder if this moment in time was a portent. 

For the time being, I start to cry. 

* * *

He has a smart mouth. 

At least, that's what my mother would call it. 

I mainly call it fun. 

It's the kind of sense of humor where a wildly inappropriate joke is out of your mouth before your brain has a chance to realize how inappropriate it is, something that's just happened. He takes a look at my shocked face, realizes what he said, and immediately starts to backtrack. 

I start laughing so hard I start crying. I get out of bed and he immediately reaches for my hand. 

"No," he says. "No, come back." 

I was only getting up to switch on the fan, but there's something in his voice that makes me crawl right back into his warm arms. Our best case scenario is three, maybe three and a half months at the outside, and who knows if it'll even be that much. 

These things are so delicate. 

For the time being, these snatches of three or four hours at a stretch feel impossibly precious. So much so that I treasure even his awfully timed jokes. 

"Next time," I say, "I'll just bring you a warm apple pie."

* * *

"What is it?"

I'm wiping tears off of my face.

"This print. It's beautiful." I grab his hand and pull him over to read it, keeping hold of his hand the whole time. I feel so hopeful in this moment, like he'll read it and whatever this stupid impasse is between us will break up and we'll cry and kiss and everything will go back to normal. 

"Huh." He says when he finishes and turns to me. My heart leaps. 

"Are you ready to go?" 

* * *

I'm midway into a long videochat when one of my best friends says something that stuns me. 

We've been talking about a lot of stuff: tri training and public health and science fiction podcasts. At some point I end up deep in a post-mortem about my love life and she interrupts, something unusual for her. 

"You need to stop confusing what's normal with what's rational." 

"What?"

"You seem to believe that everyone except for you acts perfectly rationally 100% of the time when they're making decisions about romance and love. Most people aren't, ever. Stop believing that you can or should."  

We talk for awhile longer, but I'm distracted. When we finally hang up, I walk off to read something hanging on my wall. 

It's the print from over a year ago. As far as art goes, it was never much. Just a printing of a quote from a book I have come to love. 

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart.

After reading and re-reading it for awhile, my phone beeps. It's the guy with the smart mouth and warm arms. Just seeing his name on my phone makes me break out laughing again. 

Three months or three days, it doesn't really matter to me anymore. Badly timed jokes and all, this is something worth having. 

What the Living Do

“So what have you been doing?”

“What?”

“With all the time you have now that you’re not regularly . . .”

“Oh.” I try to decide if I want to have this conversation, if I have any interest in what’s being offered on the other side of it. I don’t. We’ve been down this road together so many times. After years, I’m finally okay turning it down.

I believe that there's something better, that I'm worth something better.

“Oh, you know, Lost a lot of weight. Cut two minutes off my tri time. I’m kicking ass at work and taking care of myself.”

“I can’t even imagine going that long . . .”

I indulge myself in one long eyeroll before writing back. “Yeah. I know.”

* * *

I’m riding the bus when the first poem comes to mind.

I’m tired, my muscles are sore, and it’s been a long day. The bus is crowded and hot and I usually I would be carsick and annoyed. Today, I open an app on my cell phone and listen to my favorite reading of a Jane Kenyon poem.

There’s just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

I’m a little afraid to say it out loud. I don’t want to jinx it, but 2019 has started well. I don’t know if it was the straight up witch cleansing ritual I did on December 31st or (more likely) the fact that a new year just feels like a chance to start over, but I’ve been doing really well for the past few months. Anxiety and depression are still always in the background, but they’re easier to mute than they’ve been in years.

I feel content. Grounded. Happy.

The happiness catches me by surprise, because it doesn’t come as the result of anything tangible. The guy I thought I met ended up being a dud. I’m doing well at work, but that’s certainly never been the root cause of my happiness. I haven’t seen any shattering art or spent time in state parks or even seen my nieces lately.

Regardless, here it is, back at my feet.

Hello, happiness. I remember you.

* * *

“What’s most important to you in a relationship?”

“What?”

“What do you value? What are your goals? What are characteristics you’d like to find in another person?”

These may not standard first date questions, but I’m not really into baffing around these days. I’m trying this new thing where I’m being the person I am and fuck whatever happens.

In shorthand that means that I text when I feel like it, I dress and do my makeup for myself, and I am generally every bit as intense as I am in my work and personal relationships up front.

I go on a lot of first dates.

* * *

I’m half-asleep when the second poem wakes me up.


I’m tired, my muscles are sore, and it’s been a long day. My brain constantly wakes me up with trivia, so it’s not entirely surprising. Usually I’d be annoyed and would pull the covers over my head. Tonight, I let the guy next to me pull me in closer and think about the poem.

What you called that yearning. What you finally gave up.

I’m a little afraid to move, to breathe, to acknowledge my existence or his. This moment feels impossibly fragile. In a few minutes he will get up to leave. In a few days, I will decide that I don’t need this to be anything more than what it was, a moment of kindness and genuine warmth between two people. In a few months, we will have likely forgotten about it and each other. But for now, all that’s in the background. This, perhaps, was my something better.

I feel satisfied. Tranquil. Grateful.

The gratitude is the most striking. When it comes to intimacy I usually, um, give as good as I get. It’s something deeper that makes me think of the poem. It has been so easy to unreflectively give things up over the past years. Standards. Happiness. Independence and satisfaction and tranquility. Warmth and kindness. But more than any of those things, it’s been so easy to give up yearning for them.

Here, in this impossibly fragile moment, I feel it again. And with that feeling comes deep gratitude for the person next to me.

Hello, yearning. I remember you.

It's Still Complicated

"Yeah, I mean, you can do better."

"We always said that we were going to see you, not him."

"I never liked him, but I decided I never saw the him that you saw."

I hear a lot of this in the months after my divorce. People who previously seemed to enjoy the ex-husband's company are eager to tell me that they never understood why we were together, that he was clearly out of his league with me, that they never liked him that much anyway. They assure me things will be better the next time around. I have a canned response:

"I loved him. It was complicated."

Canned response or no, these comments send me waaaaaaay down the rabbit hole. There must have been signs I missed, right? And he was obviously horrible, so what was so wrong in me that I didn't see his horribleness? Did everyone tell me and I missed it?

I fixate on these things for months and spend hours sobbing over what a broken, disgusting person I am to have not seen the things that appeared so obvious to my friends.

* * *

I met someone. 

Just writing that sentence gives me stomach flutters and makes me flush. 

I met someone. 

It's early days, much, much too early to even be writing that sentence, but we live in hope, right?

I met someone. 

I smile when he texts me and get nervous when he doesn't. I spend hours worrying about what to wear, how to do my makeup before our dates. I talk on the phone with him when we cancel a date and don't want to hang up. I imagine sex, long weekends in the woods together, sleepy Sunday mornings with cats and coffee. 

I met someone. 

My stomach flutters. I flush.

* * *

"Jesus Christ, someone actually said that?"

I'm spending a long evening with friends, ostensibly gaming but really pouring my guts out across their dining room table. 

"More than one someone. Everyone seems eager to tell me how much they didn't like my ex-husband."

"Yes, but that's not true."

"What do you mean?"

"They're processing their own shit, Kel. They want to make you feel better, and don't know how. This is their attempt." 

This is one of the wisest things someone will say to me in my grief.

* * *

We're somewhere near hour four of our date when a few words start popping out at me. 

Vaping. Night Owl. Picky Eater. 

When I picked out my outfit for today I was going for something effortless and chic. More importantly, something that didn't require me to carry a bag with me. I look fantastic, but I also suddenly find myself on the edge of a panic attack and my meds are miles away.

He elaborates on each of these and if my lizard brain would stop screaming for long enough for me to listen I'd hear the important things. He takes care of his health and eats well. He's considerate about other people, especially ones he's seeing romantically. He's easy-going and a good listener. 

On the surface, nothing he's said is even a theoretical dealbreaker for me. But ohboy, the ex-husband and I had some knock down fights over those exact things, so now instead of listening, I'm breaking out into an anxious sweat because of those five words. 

Vaping. Night Owl. Picky Eater.

I've been saying for months now that grief is a funny, unpredictable thing. It turns out that trauma is, too. 

To people on the outside, calling the ending of my marriage traumatic probably sounds foolish. Natural disasters are traumatic. Violence is traumatic. Your divorce may have hurt a lot, but it certainly wasn't traumatic. 

It was. 

It's one of those situations where there's a lot I could say about it and not much to be said about it. But the trauma there was real, and I thought I had handled it. 

Until I'm panicking on the sidewalk somewhere around hour four of a good date.

* * *

I may have been out of my husband's league. 

Who knows? The person I am not can't even begin to evaluate who I was then. How things ended throw a pall over how things started, and I don't really see much of a point in examining it anyway. Thankfully, people say things like that less now, and I say what I've always said: "I loved him. It was complicated." 

Oddly, my feelings about this new person are every bit as complex. How can I have stomach flutters and still keep enough distance to watch for those red flags? How can I be sure that I won't make the mistakes I made with my ex-husband? How can I trust that I'm not dating someone who can keep up with me? Can I date someone again and still protect myself? Is that even still love? Am I stupid for wanting love and romance again? 

I don't have a good answer for any of it. My life is seriously lacking in those Public Radio moments of insight these days. 

It isn't that I'm totally without an answer though. 

I met someone. I like him. It's complicated. 

Grim, Effective

I depart for Family Court fortified for battle.

I’m on track to be forty minutes early, enough time to watch previous proceedings and feel comfortable with the judge. I’m neatly dressed and having a great hair day. I put on the boots that make me feel like a futuristic crime fighter and give me a Beyonce level confidence. I got out of bed an hour early to apply a full face of waterproof makeup. I have tissues and panic attack medicine in my purse.

As I’m stepping onto the bus I double-check the letter I received, curse, and get back off.

Our divorce hearing is the following week.

* * *

I never expected email would provide such an emotional gut-punch.

I was searching for an confirmation that I cancelled our honeymoon bookings (we would have departed yesterday, a point I remembered today when I’m reminded that I didn’t cancel our Tokyo hotel) when I stumble across something my ex-husband wrote and sent to me.

Thanks, Google.

It’s a post from a blog he wrote for a little while as a way (I think) of helping him process his autism diagnosis. He wrote privately, but would send me things from time to time that he thought I would like.

The post is everything I loved about him . . . It’s thoughtful and smart, nerdy and a little self-deprecating.

It’s also completely shattering.

* * *

Divorce is the most interminable process imaginable.

I was so optimistic at the beginning of our process. Devastated, yes, but I believed that we could get it done quickly. We didn’t have joint assets aside from a savings account and didn’t have any actual kids. Since we didn’t have anything to fight over we could get it wrapped by my birthday! I could start 34 with a new name and a clean slate.

That optimism was a little misplaced.

* * *

The ex-husband left me five months ago.

It feels like 500 years. Things have slowly gotten better, the way everyone said they would. I’ve lost 10+ pounds and kept it off. I sleep better and am more active. I drink less and eat healthier. My tri time was two minutes faster. I’m not longer sushed or told that my feelings are too much or too intense. My life is better in measurable ways.

In the back of my daily journal, I keep a list of things I hated about my ex. Not “oh, that was annoying” but the big, talk-these-out-in-couples-therapy kind of things. It’s part of how I’ve coped over the past five months.

It’s been grim, but effective.

Which is why the piece of writing he sent me affects me so badly.

Right above that list of things I hated was a list I made early in our marriage, when I was still trying to figure out what living together as a married couple meant. I could pull it out and read it and think about how lucky I was to have him in my life.


The piece of writing I unearth in my email is like that list of positives about the ex. It’s a relic of the person my ex could be and the person (I think) he wanted to be. It was him when he was ready for adventure and love and commitment, before those ideas became . . . whatever they became to him right before he left.


Coming across that person unexpectedly, especially days before our divorce will be finalized, provokes such a deep sense of loss that it nearly knocks the breath out of me. It’s a startling, and half-unwelcome reminder that despite all the fortifications and grim, effective lists and desire to dear god, just get this over with already there’s a part of me that is still mourning our relationship and the man he used to be.

It's Complicated

It’s a request for new music that brings people out of the woodwork.

My husband was never interested in music. No, it was more than that. I don’t think he actually liked music. He would buy tracks here and there that he had heard in movies or television or video games, but he rarely bought whole albums and I wasn't supposed to listen to music in the house without headphones because it was too stimulating.

I am somewhat on the opposite side of the spectrum.

I take opportunities to see shows live whenever I can. Big, expensive shows at arenas, tiny jazz shows in clubs that you could barely move around in, someone’s aunt’s second-cousin’s cover band at a bar in the suburbs. I have playlists curated by mood, by activity, by person. I took hours to make the husband a playlist that introduced him to all of my favorite bands and tried to tell him how I felt about him. Very high school, I know, but it meant something to me.

He never listened to it.

For weeks after he moved out I couldn’t listen to anything. I was raw enough that any music just hurt. After I moved out of our apartment and took a deep breath and realized this is actually happening I plugged in my headphones and turned on some old favorites.

I couldn’t listen to them. Any of them.

I wasn't stupid. I avoided all the Motown we used for dance parties. I didn’t touch any of the pop songs we played at our wedding. I skipped tracks that were happy or about falling for someone.

It didn’t help.

When I turned on For Emma, Forever Ago all I could think about was how much he hated Bon Iver and would ask me to turn it off. Robyn’s Body Talk was playing the last time we had an argument about one of the big things going wrong in our marriage. Even the Miles Davis and John Coltrane I used to listen to when I was falling asleep reminded me of meeting him and falling in love. There was no catharsis in any of it.

I did what any reasonable person would do. I asked my social media channels for recommendations, saying that a lot of music I loved was now associated with my ex and I needed something new.

That word. Ex. It blew up my entire life. Again.

I haven’t been HEY WORLD I’M GETTING A DIVORCE, but I haven’t exactly been silent about it either. I changed my last name. I posted about getting a new apartment, about moving, about living alone, for Christ’s sake. I’ve wrote and posted about sadness and heartbreak as it was happening.

But as soon as I posted the word ex the entire world messages me.

* * *

I was unprepared for a lot of things about getting divorced: the sudden, intense return of my sex drive, the discovery that I don’t know how to make friends aside from awkwardly blurting out “You’re cool and I want to be friends with you,” the return of surprise, awful panic attacks all catch me unaware.

What I am most unprepared for is the people who want me to perform my grief for them.

People I haven’t spoken to in decades are suddenly calling, texting, messaging with versions of the same thing. “OhhhhhhhhmyyyyyGawwwwwwwwwwwwd. I’m so sorry! What happened?”

There are people I am genuinely glad to hear from. I get a card from an old roommate saying she’s thinking about me and hopes the next year will be better for me. A friend I haven’t seen in months comes over and watches Peaky Blinders with me so I don’t have to be alone. Another person who generally isn’t into being physically affectionate holds my hand and lets me sit with my head on her shoulder for awhile because she knows how alone I feel.

The people I’m glad to hear from are the ones who don’t ask anything of me. They don’t offer lame “I’m here to help if you need it.” They bring food when they notice I’ve lost 10 pounds in two weeks. They drag me out of the house to go walk and pet their dogs. They hand over their babies for me snuggle while they unpack my boxes. They don’t ask for details about what happened.

I am amazed by the number of people who do ask for details, or who offer their own opinions about what happened. Oh, was your anxiety too much for him? Did you catch him with someone else? Did a demon secretly take over his soul during a failed exorcism and now you have to return to the faith of your youth to escape?

What I want to say is that I was trained by Ra’s al Ghul to secretly infiltrate a gang of 40-something male Trekkies. My goal was to seduce and destroy them one by one, but I realized that the poison given to me by the League of Assassins turned out to be a sugar pill, a ploy for a larger conspiracy which I wanted no part of. Now I sharpen my blade and wait for death to come.

Instead I tell them what I tell everyone.

“It’s complicated.”

* * *

Grief is so personal and complicated and I want, so much, to talk about it. I want to tell someone about how waiting for my divorce papers induced a panic attack, how getting coffee with my ex-in-laws felt like a birthday party and a funeral all at once, how I met a man recently who made a bell in my chest ring. I need to talk about how I still don’t understand why my husband doesn’t love me anymore and how I’m getting to a point where I don’t need to understand.

This is not the grief people want.

They want me to go through motions, to perform grief that will give them some sort of catharsis. They want to hear something horrible about one or both of us so they can say “That could never happen in my marriage.” They want me to set his things on fire or tell them that I can’t live another day if we don’t reconcile. That kind of a narrative is reassuring.

And that narrative isn't true. At least, it’s not always true.

I have days where I feel great.

I wake up and get dressed and feel beautiful. I go to work and feel happy and fulfilled and like I’m making a real difference in the world. I spend time with friends talking about comics or music or the role of coded eroticism in 19th century novels and I feel funny and smart and interesting. I feel like I might be romantically valuable to someone else. Of course I am! People I love have shown me many times.

I have days where I feel like a piece of garbage someone has thrown away.

I wake up and get dressed and feel dumpy. I go to work and write shitty first drafts all day. I spend time watching trash television just so I don’t have to think about what a disgusting pile of crap I am. I feel like I’ll never be romantically valuable to someone else. How could I be? Someone I loved already showed me I’m not.

There’s no catharsis in any of it.

Blushy

A few weeks ago I went back and reread our wedding vows.

It was a dumb idea, but I was looking for . . . something. Some indication of what was about to come, some hint that I loved my husband more than he loved me, some inkling that he was lying when he promised to hang on with me through the hard stuff.

It was counterproductive. I knew that even as I was searching through my documents for the final copy. There was no way I could learn anything new about the person I had been with for years by staring at something we built in our best, most optimistic place.

I thought divorce and therapy and ruminating on the people we were would help me discover something new about what happened to us. It didn’t. It just confirmed what I already knew.

He wasn’t the person I needed him to be.

* * *

I had two goals for myself when my husband moved out.

Of course I did. I had a new five-year plan the week after he left. I’m a grant-writer. My religion is measurable outcomes and SMART goals.

The first was relatively simple. Be an adult. Treat the husband with kindness where I could and respect where I couldn’t. Avoiding airing dirty laundry to mutual friends or family. Provide prompt replies to requests for information. As much as you may want to, don’t smash or steal any of his stuff (leaving the special edition blu-ray of the original Alien trilogy behind was my greatest test).

That part has been easy enough. (He may have other feelings about this, who knows). I’m still on good terms with his family. When people ask “What happened?!” I say that it was complicated and I’d rather not talk about it. I apply the “is it true, is it kind, is it necessary” test to everything I say outside of my shrink’s office. He still owns the Alien trilogy.

I’m not perfect. I have days where I fantasize about smashing all of his shit with a baseball bat or breaking back into the apartment and erasing all of his saved Breath of the Wild data. I left Alien but I took Silence of the Lambs.

I’m trying.

* * *

I have a crush on someone.

Of all of the things I expected to happen after the husband and I separated, this was absolutely not one of them. Having to hide my cell phone from myself so I don’t text an “I miss you?” Yup, sounds about right. Not being able to sleep because I’m up armchair psychologizing about what went wrong. Duh. Crying uncontrollably while organizing my spice rack? Unexpected, but not out of the realm of possibility.

But an actual, stomach-swoopy, blushy, can’t-make-eye-contact, feel like a sixteen year old crush?

Jesus. What kind of a person am I? I don’t even have my divorce papers yet and I’m already feeling like a dumb kid, mooning over someone else. Am I incapable of being alone for two months without immediately looking for someone new?

This isn’t the person I wanted to be.

* * *

The second goal was to come through the divorce with an open, warm, and trusting heart.

I’ve lived my life as a pretty warm and open-hearted person. Not necessarily as a result of trying, but because that’s just the kind of personality I was lucky enough to get. It’s something I really like about myself and wanted to be the retain in the midst of a shitstorm of anger, despair, and bitterness.

It’s hard because it’s not really the kind of thing I can gauge in the moment. It’s easy to look at my actions and say: “I didn’t smash my husband’s signed-by-George-Takei-Enterprise-Model on the way out the door. Well done.” In the midst of the previously mentioned shitstorm of emotions it’s harder to say “I’m as accepting, warm, and loving as I was four years ago.”

The best measurement I’ve come up with so far is looking at how I’m treating myself. I’m pretty fucking hard on myself, so can I just calm the fuck down and see a stupid, stomach-swoopy, blushy crush as just that, and not some kind of a reflection on my character?

Because all that stuff, the ruminating and therapy and inappropriately-timed-crushes can show me what I was hoping to find in my wedding vows; what I’m hoping for from the goals I set for myself during this whole miserable process.

I can be the person I need myself to be.

That One Summer

I’m crossing the street when Spotify betrays me.

I’ve been listening to a playlist they’ve made for me of songs I’ve listened to in summers past. Music has always served as an extra-sense kind of diary for me. I can picture the bar where I first heard the song Wagon Wheel, or feel the heat of summer night when I played Blackbird for my husband. This particular playlist has a lot of songs I was listening to prior to our wedding and it’s causing a lot of pleasant memories. 

The song that catches me off guard is one that I listened to a lot the summer before I met my husband. A few months before meeting him a friendship became something stickier than a friendship, and I played that song a lot while it was going on. When I met the husband I took the song off my playlists and eventually ghosted on the man. I miss the man involved from time to time but I never really looked back. Hearing this particular song on this particular summer day everything I felt that summer hits, and hits hard. 

The feelings are partially wistfulness for the friendship, but also desire for the person I was that summer. In the stickiness between friendship and sex and not-dating, I was constantly trying to be my most interesting, beautiful, desirable self.

It was amazing.

I was constantly reading and looking for odd bits of interesting news, so I was an excellent conversationalist. Sexual tension is a great incentive to buy new clothes and work out, so I always looked great. Dopamine is a terrific short-term replacement for serotonin, so I felt incredible.

It was terrible.

I was always trying to be witty and I stopped being fun. I was in shape, but worked out and monitored my food to the point of obsession. I was constantly high on the rushes I would get from the guy, but they were always followed by deep sadness when I realized he would never be able to give me what I needed. He left me breathless, in so many ways.

Hearing the song that stops me in the crosswalk leaves me breathless again.

***

Marriage is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Before the husband, all of my relationships were disposable things. They were opportunities to to try on parts of myself: The Has it All Together Career Woman, The Homemaker, The Wanna-Be Urban Farmer. My marriage is where I can have it mostly together, but I can also have a Saturday where I rewatch Archer and laugh like an idiot. I can whip up coq-au-vin after I set my cookbook on fire.

I can also be the complicated person that my mental health and extreme empathy make me. Usually that’s not a bad person, but we’re playing our marriage on an higher difficulty setting. My mental health issues combined with my husband’s autism mean that our capacity for misunderstanding and hurt feelings is nearly limitless.

But even with that limitless capacity, he’s the one sitting next to me laughing at television, putting out my small fires, and helping me learn to be the beautiful, desirable person that can still be herself.  

***

When I get home, it’s one of the few nights the husband has beat me back to the apartment. He’s cooking something that smells delicious, has fed the cats, and has a bottle of of cold champagne. His day hasn’t left him so overstimulated that he needs quiet in the house, so I turn on the speakers and start writing him a love letter in a language he won’t understand.

I play the song I’ve been listening to since our vacation in North Carolina, a week that felt like a honeymoon we never got to take. I play songs from our wedding and we dance a little in the living room. I play the song that I listen to when I’m mad at him.

I also play him the song from the summer before I met him, so he can know that part of me, too.

I’m sweaty from public transit and stopped wearing makeup after our first date. I’m still getting used to my different body and I don’t have a single interesting thing to tell him about the news or my work.

I accept a cold glass of champagne from him, happy in the knowledge that in this moment I am beautiful, desirable, and, finally, me.