Table of Contents
To my Salamandre
Introduction
when i first started thinking about ending my marriage, I was terrified. Divorce was up there with death and taxes, right? It was a big baddie. I felt sadness at the loss of something to which my spouse and I had both pledged our everlasting commitment, and I also felt fear and foreboding about being in the divorced category.
Nuptial status can define us very muchwhether were married, never married, divorced, widowed, or remarried. We wander around with our bag of assumptions about what that means about the person who is any of those things. Especially when that person is me.
Dictionaries generally define divorce as a legal dissolution of marriage that releases husband and wife from their marital obligations. The term comes from the Latin, divertere, which is to divert (to turn aside or turn from a path or course; deflect). To split. Its linked to versus, opposition, or turning and rotating (like the universe, like a ploughman turns the soil). Thats what it means, literally. What else does it mean? Its up to you. Vertigodizziness. Versionyour version of the story.
Whats behind the divorce is really what people should think of in terms of what they have to grieve. Lets say that it wasnt what you thought it would be. Big time. You changed, your partner changed, or you stopped growing. Or you found yourself in a legal union with someone who defiled it by infidelity, verbal or physical or mental abuse, or just plain stubbornness and selfishness. Or you just stopped loving the person, the person stopped loving you, or you realized that what you thought you wanted was not actually what will sustain you for the rest of your life. This isnt what I signed on for.
You started hearing that little voice. This isnt the right thing for me. I am not living my truth. I should really get out of here. And then you did the seventeen things we all do to not hear that voice of inner truth, because it would mean a great big change and many little ones.
After I moved out, I found the term to be so loaded with stuff that I didnt want to take on that I wouldnt even say it for a long time. I grieved the loss of the marriage, no doubtbut I didnt feel the extra badness that I thought I would. The air seemed purer. I had more free time. I did the dishes when I felt like it and didnt feel guilty because someone else had first. It was like moving off campus all over again, but without the long-haired roommate guy walking around in his towel. I had a fresh start.
When people asked me what was new, I said, My ex and I are living in two houses now. Or, He and I split up. Then I had to steel myself, because guess what was coming? Oh, no! I am so sorry! I wasnt. I wasnt sorryI had just finished a big race, basically, crossed the finish line, and wanted a glass of water, a towel, a slap on the back, and to be asked, So, how was it? How did it go? What did you learn? How do you feel? Give me a hug, girl!
It reminded me of when my parents split. God bless them, they hung on for ten more years than they should have. They didnt want to traumatize me and wanted to be accepted in the eyes of their church and their families and friends. They didnt want to be divorced. What did traumatize me was living in a house that was empty of a very crucial element: a healthy and mutually respectful love relationship. When they gave it up, I felt relief (because I knew it was inevitable) and space, and possibility, and peace flow in. And yet I encountered a bunch of grownups and peers pitying me, with prurient solicitousness.... The weight of their stuff around divorce had no place in my fragile little adolescent world, but I didnt know how to elucidate that, except to say, You know, its fine, its better, actually.
Ask me about my divorce. You wanted to know about my college graduation, my first job, my new apartment, my engagement, my wedding, my honeymoon, my babys birth. All rites of passage, all changes, all evidence of growth. As is this. And, maybe its not the best moment, but, make space for the possibility that I have some cool things to share. Because its been a wild ride, and I am learning new things every day. A friendship is about sharing whats going on for each of us, and if we stop here, at this point of where I am, well, then, that just leads to distance and growing apart, and now is not the time for more of that.
I learned to say, when asked what was new, Everythings good, my marriage has ended, but its a good thing; its the best thing for us to do. A sandwich of good. It helped a lot. People relaxed at that point.
Of course, as you know if you are chilling with the big D, there will be people who drop off the face of the earth: the old friends you had as a couple but not as an individual. Always good to know who your friends really are, or, more charitably, which of your friends are completely triggered and weirded out by divorce. They might be back, after they stop hiding under the bed from your divorce cooties. As Marrit Ingman says in her essay, It made me uncomfortable when... a couple I knew and regarded highly was calling it quits. I tried to never take it personally, but you cant hear about someone elses divorce without imagining it happening to you. It is proof of the mortality of marriage.
You cant take the deepest core of grief and loss away from something that has its unavoidable traumatic component, but divorce can lose the shame/fear/stigma frosting on its sometimes bitter cake. Because a lot of those bites are surprisingly sweet.
Marriage is a beautiful thing, when it works, and when it doesnt. When it works, its made up of two people who love each other, sharing lifes best and worst moments, fostering each others growth, and having really great sex. When it doesnt, it was made up of two people who loved each other, shared lifes best and worst moments, fostered each others growth, and most likely had really great sex. So, instead of sitting with the last incarnation of it, which led to a split, I like to appreciate and be grateful for the whole, which gave me so much. It gave me the beautiful Manhattan wedding day, the French honeymoon, the honeymoon period, a summer on a sailboat, two gorgeous children, a sounding board, a hand in mine, and a lifelong friend who knows me better than most people. When it ended, it gave the two of us the opportunity to feel most deeply who we were in that moment, and then run with it... to flower and spread our limbs in all sorts of directions, until we found another place to put down roots. And, we did. Our kids have two extra adults in their lives who model different ways of being in the world, which broadens their definition of what it can mean to be an adult.
What follows: a spicy, riveting selection of essays from women from all walks of life. The words within will make you laugh, cry, nod your head, and shake your fist. The unifying thread is I got divorced, and it rocked my world.
As Leigh Anne Jasheway-Bryant says in her essay, If Im happy, thats the kind of fairytale everyone should dream of.
Several Things I Know and a Few Things I dont
melanie jones
i was twenty-six when my husband left on our second anniversary. It was New Years Eve. I weighed approximately two pounds, not including the frizzy hair piled on top of my head. The bags under my eyes were like what people might take on monthlong expeditions to Everest. (Everest people have sherpas to carry their bags. I had to carry mine by myself. On my face.)
