You would think one long year would sufficiently exhaust my tears. No. There are still good days and bad days. Don't get me wrong, most days are good -- or at least so filled with work and other commitments that they have room for nothing else. But some days are still very bad. Oddly, now that I don't see or talk to the Professor, I think more about the things I loved, the things I miss, not less. (My therapist says it's "normal.") In his absence, I suppose it's easier to forget the most exquisitely painful moments of the last year and, instead, to recall the sweet moments we shared in the seven years before. Not that they were all sweet. I recall many horrible moments as well, but the moments I recall best involve my being horrible.
I have a special skill for recalling the worst in myself, but that probably has something to do with the fact that my worst is pretty bad. I cannot deny that I am a person of extremes. Like the nursery rhyme says, There was a little girl, who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, she was very, very good, and when she was bad, she was horrid.
It would certainly be easy to embrace a version of my marriage in which I followed my husband to Chicago, worked at miserable, demoralizing job so that he could pursue his PhD with leisure, financed his every consumable (and expensive) desire, and was left once he secured a position teaching law before 80 new young and admiring students each semester (approximately 54% of which are female, according to statistics). It would be easy to embrace the simple version in which he left (or, rather, did not leave but said he wanted out); began dating immediately, while still living in our house, regularly staying out well past midnight; yelled contemptuously at me to stop crying myself to sleep night after night, as I was keeping him awake; moved into an apartment with two total strangers and slept on a mattress on the floor for months (which apparently was more appealing than living with me); and asked me to nonetheless be available to him for practical and emotional purposes for many months thereafter -- a request I willingly, happily, and heartbreakingly obliged. It would be easy, and those things are all factually true -- and painful to recall. But that is not an accurate rendition of what happened, because it lacks context.
The context is this. I am hard to live with and hard to love. I am sensitive, demanding, bratty, selfish. I am rigid. I can be hysterical. I can be nasty. I can lose my temper, and lose control. I have thrown a remote control across the room, splintering it. (I had to order a new one from Tivo for $50.) I scream. I cry. I do not tolerate dissent. I have been known to bite my hand, literally, when I can't take it anymore, don't know what else to do to release my anger (although, in my defense, rarely).
The day before the Professor proposed, we bought him a new grill for Easter. We assembled it together at home -- precisely the kind of task that brought out my worst, my most rigid and demanding self. For not getting it exactly right, for not being quick enough, I derided him. I degraded him, I dismissed him. I know that much. We had a terrible fight, which I can't precisely recall, but I'm sure it ended with me screaming and sobbing hysterically in bed, as they all did. The next day, he asked me to marry him nonetheless. He hid Easter eggs all over the house, a treasure hunt ending in a fuzzy yellow chick hiding a blue Tiffany box. When I remember that weekend, I remember how I yelled at him over the grill. And he was hiding Easter eggs, a sweet clue to the next egg tucked inside each one.
There are other, equally horrific and shameful memories, and they all share the same theme: I was ugly, I was selfish, I was cruel. I often acted like the Professor's love was assumed and expected, however I treated him, whatever I did.
Perhaps we were never a good fit, perhaps it would not have worked, however perfect I could be -- I don't know, and I never will. But what I do know, what I have come to face over this last year, is that I have a huge hand in the end of my marriage. In a way, I helped to set the end of things into motion before we'd even started. I crushed him.
The last year is not the whole story. It is humiliating and painful in a special way, because it means I have to take some ownership of my marriage and divorce -- to look at myself and cringe -- but, it is true. I shared seven years with the Professor (eight, if you count this last year). I knew him. Despite what those who love me most may want to think, because it's easier, because they love me, because the alternative is complex and, thus, uncomfortable, the Professor is a good person -- a person enthusiastic and hopeful for love -- and for most of the eight years that we shared, he was probably better to me than I often deserved. And so, whatever has happened in the last year that has hurt me, damaged me, destroyed my trust and hope, I have learned this: I, too, am culpable.
It is not the whole story, but the story is not whole without it.
9.21.2011
Witness
I saw something important tonight.
Walking back to the office after a quick bite, I saw a crowd. Nothing unusual in downtown Chicago. I walked into the crowd, meaning to walk right through. It was a circle of sorts, but people were leaning in towards each other, away from what their heads turned to face -- a young woman being forced to the ground by a man in jeans and a red sweatshirt. I stopped walking, rocked on my feet, and turned half towards her, half away like the others. No one seemed sure what to do, poised between stepping in or walking away.
It was a few seconds before he forced her to the sidewalk on her face, writhing. She kept saying "why?" He pulled handcuffs out of his jeans. Apparently, she'd shop-lifted from H&M. Who knows what she took. She looked like a student, with a back back and lap top bag that had been flung to the street in their struggle.
The entire scuffle probably lasted five seconds and we all dispersed, set into motion when he snapped on the handcuffs and hoisted her to her feet, dragged her back towards the store. I walked away feeling sad, like I'd just seen someone's worst shame, someone's life fall apart.
Walking back to the office after a quick bite, I saw a crowd. Nothing unusual in downtown Chicago. I walked into the crowd, meaning to walk right through. It was a circle of sorts, but people were leaning in towards each other, away from what their heads turned to face -- a young woman being forced to the ground by a man in jeans and a red sweatshirt. I stopped walking, rocked on my feet, and turned half towards her, half away like the others. No one seemed sure what to do, poised between stepping in or walking away.
It was a few seconds before he forced her to the sidewalk on her face, writhing. She kept saying "why?" He pulled handcuffs out of his jeans. Apparently, she'd shop-lifted from H&M. Who knows what she took. She looked like a student, with a back back and lap top bag that had been flung to the street in their struggle.
The entire scuffle probably lasted five seconds and we all dispersed, set into motion when he snapped on the handcuffs and hoisted her to her feet, dragged her back towards the store. I walked away feeling sad, like I'd just seen someone's worst shame, someone's life fall apart.
9.19.2011
35 Things (The Most Important Thing)
I cut off all of my hair. Ok, not all of it, but more than half. I don't know what got into me. I went in for a trim, and as I climbed into the chair and Mallory wrapped a black bib around my neck, I decided to cut it all off. That's not exactly right. I didn't contemplate it, but the words came out of my mouth. She asked, how short, and I said I didn't care. I just wanted something different. I crave something different.
Why do we do that? Do we think changing something physically will change something else? Change our lives? I have done it before, and I bet you have, too. I have cut my hair short, colored it red, gotten a tattoo, pierced my belly button (the only one of the four that I regret). I have lost weight and gained weight and lifted weights. But it hasn't changed me. Although I suppose it reflects something else, something already changing and moving inside, something that wants to stretch and get out, or hide.
Mallory's hair is neon pink, sometimes blue - the unnatural blue of children's food. You might have some trepidation about letting someone with spiky pink hair cut or color yours, but I like talking to her. She makes no judgment (after all, she has spiky pink hair!). Like my therapist, but cheaper. Friday night we got caught up on our love lives -- mine, still a daily process in healing; hers, sadly foundering. Mallory asked me if it's still the first thing I think about when I wake up each morning.
I thought perhaps she was looking for comfort in what may be her own story soon, and I was reluctant to answer. I was also caught off guard. People who know you well don't ask those questions, probably because they hesitate to encourage you to think of the thing they most want you to forget, maybe naively hope you already have. Strangers don't ask such questions because they wouldn't dare. But shampoo and a warm bath towel create parameters that don't apply elsewhere.
I told her I don't wake every day immediately devastated by the loss, the way I once did. But each morning, somewhere between the bed, the dog food bowl, the coffee pot and the shower, I have a thought of him, or of us. It resides under the skin of my consciousness.
That's probably not what she wanted to hear and, frankly, not what I'd want to hear, either. But it's there, and I carry it with me. And perhaps the things I'm doing now -- working 14 hours a day, hang-gliding, cutting my hair, joining a gym for the first time in a decade, getting my scuba-diving certification -- are just a transparent attempt to build a new consciousness, one without him in it. Or perhaps it's just me living my life, grasping it with a new awareness of how abruptly and painfully it could change, of how inconspicuously time can pass without my having done anything I should have done.
(After all, I did waste two years of my life unemployed, when I should have been writing, volunteering, learning, doing things. I didn't know it was wasted, at the time. I thought I was recovering from a hellish job, loving my family of four, then trying to patch it back together. But I didn't know what was in store, and now I know that I can never know. And so I feel compelled to move, to do things that scare me, to excite myself, to go for it, and I get restless when I don't have to be at the office by seven a.m. on a Saturday.)
Probably, it's some of both -- pushing myself away from what was, and racing into the night to find the next adventure because I've already lost too many opportunities through my own complacency.
I once wrote the Professor a letter in which I told him that I wanted to mark the moment, mark the seconds and days we shared in early love, in finding new adventures in making fried egg sandwiches and giggling in bed at night, because I knew that the moment would pass, that one day we would have hard times, we would struggle, and I didn't want us to look back on that moment and say, if only we had known how good it was. I wrote that I wanted us to say we are so lucky that we knew.
Apparently we both forgot that letter, that moment, and what we knew then. We blinked, and five years passed. I resented him for the fact that I hated my job, and later because I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, and so I did nothing. He resented me for being anxious and unhappy with work, and then for still being unhappy without it. He lost respect for me and, to be honest, I think I lost respect for myself, as well. And, in all that time, I did nothing to change it. Or I did, but I was too late. (I won't get into what the Professor did or didn't do, because this isn't really about him and was never meant to be.)
And so, this is the single most important thing I learned in the 35th year of my life: If we let life happen to us, it will, and we will sit and watch, helpless and nothing more.
So, here's to impulsive hair cuts, new jobs, hang-gliding, scuba-diving, planting spring bulbs in September, working 14 hours a day and meeting friends for dinner when the day is done, drafting your own divorce papers, joining a gym and using it, dusting off your bike, getting a new passport, joining a book club, using a power saw, serving dinner at a soup kitchen, being an attorney again, and doing whatever else scares you most.
Why do we do that? Do we think changing something physically will change something else? Change our lives? I have done it before, and I bet you have, too. I have cut my hair short, colored it red, gotten a tattoo, pierced my belly button (the only one of the four that I regret). I have lost weight and gained weight and lifted weights. But it hasn't changed me. Although I suppose it reflects something else, something already changing and moving inside, something that wants to stretch and get out, or hide.
Mallory's hair is neon pink, sometimes blue - the unnatural blue of children's food. You might have some trepidation about letting someone with spiky pink hair cut or color yours, but I like talking to her. She makes no judgment (after all, she has spiky pink hair!). Like my therapist, but cheaper. Friday night we got caught up on our love lives -- mine, still a daily process in healing; hers, sadly foundering. Mallory asked me if it's still the first thing I think about when I wake up each morning.
I thought perhaps she was looking for comfort in what may be her own story soon, and I was reluctant to answer. I was also caught off guard. People who know you well don't ask those questions, probably because they hesitate to encourage you to think of the thing they most want you to forget, maybe naively hope you already have. Strangers don't ask such questions because they wouldn't dare. But shampoo and a warm bath towel create parameters that don't apply elsewhere.
I told her I don't wake every day immediately devastated by the loss, the way I once did. But each morning, somewhere between the bed, the dog food bowl, the coffee pot and the shower, I have a thought of him, or of us. It resides under the skin of my consciousness.
That's probably not what she wanted to hear and, frankly, not what I'd want to hear, either. But it's there, and I carry it with me. And perhaps the things I'm doing now -- working 14 hours a day, hang-gliding, cutting my hair, joining a gym for the first time in a decade, getting my scuba-diving certification -- are just a transparent attempt to build a new consciousness, one without him in it. Or perhaps it's just me living my life, grasping it with a new awareness of how abruptly and painfully it could change, of how inconspicuously time can pass without my having done anything I should have done.
(After all, I did waste two years of my life unemployed, when I should have been writing, volunteering, learning, doing things. I didn't know it was wasted, at the time. I thought I was recovering from a hellish job, loving my family of four, then trying to patch it back together. But I didn't know what was in store, and now I know that I can never know. And so I feel compelled to move, to do things that scare me, to excite myself, to go for it, and I get restless when I don't have to be at the office by seven a.m. on a Saturday.)
Probably, it's some of both -- pushing myself away from what was, and racing into the night to find the next adventure because I've already lost too many opportunities through my own complacency.
I once wrote the Professor a letter in which I told him that I wanted to mark the moment, mark the seconds and days we shared in early love, in finding new adventures in making fried egg sandwiches and giggling in bed at night, because I knew that the moment would pass, that one day we would have hard times, we would struggle, and I didn't want us to look back on that moment and say, if only we had known how good it was. I wrote that I wanted us to say we are so lucky that we knew.
Apparently we both forgot that letter, that moment, and what we knew then. We blinked, and five years passed. I resented him for the fact that I hated my job, and later because I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, and so I did nothing. He resented me for being anxious and unhappy with work, and then for still being unhappy without it. He lost respect for me and, to be honest, I think I lost respect for myself, as well. And, in all that time, I did nothing to change it. Or I did, but I was too late. (I won't get into what the Professor did or didn't do, because this isn't really about him and was never meant to be.)
And so, this is the single most important thing I learned in the 35th year of my life: If we let life happen to us, it will, and we will sit and watch, helpless and nothing more.
So, here's to impulsive hair cuts, new jobs, hang-gliding, scuba-diving, planting spring bulbs in September, working 14 hours a day and meeting friends for dinner when the day is done, drafting your own divorce papers, joining a gym and using it, dusting off your bike, getting a new passport, joining a book club, using a power saw, serving dinner at a soup kitchen, being an attorney again, and doing whatever else scares you most.
9.11.2011
35 Things (Part One)
This post was supposed to be written on my birthday, but I've been thinking about turning 35 and what I've been through in the last year, and I've been overwhelmed by what to say. And now, since I've procrastinated, this post cooincides with other important moments. It's been one year since the Professor told me he wants a divorce. Again, fall is coming, and that time feels close enough to press my cheek against. The season reminds me. I feel like I've been in twin worlds -- this fall, one year removed, and that one. The Professor's brother is getting married in Georgia next weekend. An epic event, to be sure. Although I don't know the details (which feels wrong, like I've forgotten to set the alarm or turn off the coffee pot), I know my brother-in-law, and nothing he does is ordinary. But the celebration will be marked by my father-in-law's absence. Perhaps an empty chair to convey what is missing from the day, from their lives. And, for me, it will also marked by my own absence. Thinking of it, I feel like a ghost, watching my twin life go on without me.
Memories and emotion are close to the surface these days. Some things are hard to write about not just because they are emotional or sad, but because words seem insufficient. This is one of those times.
The last two months have been tough. I billed 275 hours last month, which is a lot and then some. I'm still trying to build credibility at my job, and I'm doing things I'm not very experienced at. Between the hours and the newness, I've been completely overwhelmed, just trying to hang in there and do what has to be done. I still enjoy the people I work with, but I cannot say I enjoy working 80 hours a week. I am just trying to get things done, not do them well.
I can say the same for my personal life. Seven weeks ago, I was divorced. I spent approximately 90 seconds thinking about it that day, before heading into a conference call with a client, and I really haven't had much time to process it since then. Instead I've been assembling furniture at midnight, packing the Professor's things at six a.m. before I head to work for the weekend. Grinding coffee for the morning before I go to bed takes all the energy I can summon. But I do it and fall into bed beside Chase, grateful for those few quiet moments when I can tell her how much I love her.
I don't mean to sound sorry for myself. I have squeezed some lovely moments into the last two months: a weekend visit from Aunt J and her friends; a ten p.m. birthday dinner at Next; my birthday party; and, last weekend, hang-gliding and a great weekend visit with my sister. Yesterday I planted hyacinth bulbs during a break from excising the last of the Professor's things from the house. I dug cool dirt with my fingernails, let earthworms crawl over my hands. I ate a ham sandwich with a fresh tomato from my yard.
I have been lucky. But I am also tired beyond belief. It has been a long two months. But it's been a long year, so it fits.
In many ways, this year was a crisis, and I wonder, have I gotten through it? At times -- most times -- I think I have. But then I am at my birthday dinner with our mutual friends. Someone mentions his name, then stumbles. I am embarrassed, although I shouldn't be, and sad. I am folding laundry while it rains, white t-shirts that smell like bleach and fabric softener. I am leaving work, almost too tired to pull out of the parking garage and fight Friday night traffic. I clean out the garage, find some old cards and letters I'd overlooked before. I sit outside and read them, crying. The loss is there, in quiet corners, in brief but sobering moments. The magnitude of it catches me off guard.
It's hard to believe I'm 35 years old. I feel fifteen, I feel 95. I'd like to say the last year ultimately brought only good things, and I could certainly say that it brought only bad (and I think no one would judge me for that) -- but either statement would deny the complexity of the last year. It has been ugly and cruel. It has aged me more than any other. At times, it left me broken, consumed by myself, by my panic, my sorrow, my immediate experience. But the year has also been gracious -- in giving me wisdom, in teaching me silence, in forcing me to accept my own lack of control over anything but myself. I have reflected and changed more than in any year before.
When my dear friend, Anna, died the year she graduated from college, I spoke at a memorial service the school held for her. I struggled to write something worthy of her life, to find something meaningful in her death that I could share. But I realized, and I think I said at the service, that I could not find meaning in her death. Instead, I found meaning in her life, and in how I chose to move forward and change my own life as a result of that. Sometimes that is the best we can do. And that can bring us good and make us better. That is what I have tried to do with this year. I cannot find meaning in the Professor leaving me. I have tried, but cannot find purpose in that, or say that it was meant to be. I don't really believe those things. But I can make meaning from it, from who I was and how I ended up there, and what I did with what happened next. And I have tried my best to do that.
A lot has come of this year, as painful as it has been to get at. And so, to commemorate my 35th birthday, a little bit late, I am attempting to compile a list of 35 things I have discovered in the 35 year of my life. Apparently I'm a slow learner, because it's taking a while.
The first fifteen:
Memories and emotion are close to the surface these days. Some things are hard to write about not just because they are emotional or sad, but because words seem insufficient. This is one of those times.
The last two months have been tough. I billed 275 hours last month, which is a lot and then some. I'm still trying to build credibility at my job, and I'm doing things I'm not very experienced at. Between the hours and the newness, I've been completely overwhelmed, just trying to hang in there and do what has to be done. I still enjoy the people I work with, but I cannot say I enjoy working 80 hours a week. I am just trying to get things done, not do them well.
I can say the same for my personal life. Seven weeks ago, I was divorced. I spent approximately 90 seconds thinking about it that day, before heading into a conference call with a client, and I really haven't had much time to process it since then. Instead I've been assembling furniture at midnight, packing the Professor's things at six a.m. before I head to work for the weekend. Grinding coffee for the morning before I go to bed takes all the energy I can summon. But I do it and fall into bed beside Chase, grateful for those few quiet moments when I can tell her how much I love her.
I don't mean to sound sorry for myself. I have squeezed some lovely moments into the last two months: a weekend visit from Aunt J and her friends; a ten p.m. birthday dinner at Next; my birthday party; and, last weekend, hang-gliding and a great weekend visit with my sister. Yesterday I planted hyacinth bulbs during a break from excising the last of the Professor's things from the house. I dug cool dirt with my fingernails, let earthworms crawl over my hands. I ate a ham sandwich with a fresh tomato from my yard.
I have been lucky. But I am also tired beyond belief. It has been a long two months. But it's been a long year, so it fits.
In many ways, this year was a crisis, and I wonder, have I gotten through it? At times -- most times -- I think I have. But then I am at my birthday dinner with our mutual friends. Someone mentions his name, then stumbles. I am embarrassed, although I shouldn't be, and sad. I am folding laundry while it rains, white t-shirts that smell like bleach and fabric softener. I am leaving work, almost too tired to pull out of the parking garage and fight Friday night traffic. I clean out the garage, find some old cards and letters I'd overlooked before. I sit outside and read them, crying. The loss is there, in quiet corners, in brief but sobering moments. The magnitude of it catches me off guard.
It's hard to believe I'm 35 years old. I feel fifteen, I feel 95. I'd like to say the last year ultimately brought only good things, and I could certainly say that it brought only bad (and I think no one would judge me for that) -- but either statement would deny the complexity of the last year. It has been ugly and cruel. It has aged me more than any other. At times, it left me broken, consumed by myself, by my panic, my sorrow, my immediate experience. But the year has also been gracious -- in giving me wisdom, in teaching me silence, in forcing me to accept my own lack of control over anything but myself. I have reflected and changed more than in any year before.
When my dear friend, Anna, died the year she graduated from college, I spoke at a memorial service the school held for her. I struggled to write something worthy of her life, to find something meaningful in her death that I could share. But I realized, and I think I said at the service, that I could not find meaning in her death. Instead, I found meaning in her life, and in how I chose to move forward and change my own life as a result of that. Sometimes that is the best we can do. And that can bring us good and make us better. That is what I have tried to do with this year. I cannot find meaning in the Professor leaving me. I have tried, but cannot find purpose in that, or say that it was meant to be. I don't really believe those things. But I can make meaning from it, from who I was and how I ended up there, and what I did with what happened next. And I have tried my best to do that.
A lot has come of this year, as painful as it has been to get at. And so, to commemorate my 35th birthday, a little bit late, I am attempting to compile a list of 35 things I have discovered in the 35 year of my life. Apparently I'm a slow learner, because it's taking a while.
The first fifteen:
- I can stop crying, start a new job, get a divorce, work 14 hours a day, take care of two dogs, throw a baby shower, keep the house clean, pack my ex-husband's things, have the yard landscaped, hang with my girlfriends, throw a birthday party, assemble furniture at midnight and host house guests - all at once.
- But I don't have time to wash my hair every day. Or even every other day.
- I can still laugh. I must laugh. Despite everything, and because of everything.
- Acceptance is a battle we fight entirely with ourselves, and perhaps the bloodiest one.
- Everything else is easier.
- People say strange and/or bizarrely inappropriate things when they don't know what else to say. Like maybe he'll come back one day. Someone said that this week. There is really no adequate response. Perhaps laughing maniacally while crying hysterically, if you can pull that off. I can't.
- I can do and tolerate more than I thought. We can do almost anything in order to keep living. The guy who cut off his own arm? I could do that. I might bleed to death, but I would give it a shot.
- Grief is not a room we pass through. It dwells within, blooms and recedes, evolves.
- I can climb onto a total stranger's back and let a go-cart with wings tow me 3000 feet into the air by a clothes line. And love it.
- I don't know if I can change certain fundamental aspects of my personality or temperament (and I'm not sure I want to), but I can become a better version of myself. It's hard, and it's going to be a long journey, but I'm working on it. For me.
- I can trim a door with a circular saw and not cut off my fingers.
- Speaking of cutting, I will never cut someone out of my life with no acknowledgment, explanation or goodbye.
- I made a lot of mistakes. I am not blameless, and I cannot pretend to myself that I am. But I face that, and I am proud of myself for getting through this last year the way that I have.
- I miss Crazy Dog more than I thought I would. A lot more. But if I ever get another Crazy Dog again, I'm returning him immediately, before I love him and without shame or guilt.
- It's never too late to start over. Taking this job was the right decision. I faced my fears, it didn't kill me, and I am good at a lot of what I do. But I'm still not so sure I want to do it for the next twenty years. Thinking about that MFA.
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