Happy 1st Anniversary to my Battered Heart

A year ago tonight was the last night I would spend as someone's wife.  In the morning I would be up at dawn, to drive to the apartment to do the 'moving in' inspection and sign the rental forms.  Then back to the house by 7:00 am to meet the movers.  I encountered my husband at some point that morning as he left for work.  He offered to help.  I couldn't possibly understand what his offer meant.  Did he mean that he would help me load things into my car?  Did he mean that he would drive over to the apartment with me and set up the beds. Was he offering to lend me money?  How could I allow the man who wanted me gone to help expedite the process?  What I wanted was to be in his arms.  What I wanted was his assurance that this would only be for a short while until we could figure things out.  What I wanted was for him to tell me he loved me, that he would see me for dinner.

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I've just had a quick peek at our wedding photos, and the slideshow I made for him with pictures documenting each stage of the construction of the house we designed together. It's become hard to remember he was ever that happy with me. That house- that life we planned together has entirely burned to ash.  I still cannot believe how easily he has gone on without me. 

Today is a hard day.  My knees have buckled.  Tomorrow I go to my lawyer and make it official.  Then maybe I can go on too... without him.  But not tonight.... tonight I am in mourning.

The Dark Side

When a marriage ends, there’s enough angst to write about without having to disclose the very darkest moments of despair, but I feel somewhat disingenuous about my continued skirting around the edges of the pit.  I’ve been a tour guide through my journey thus far, but I’ve avoided escorting you into the darkest depths of the pit intentionally.  It’s not exactly that there are things that are too private- I pretty much relinquished claims to privacy when describing my unsuccessful attempt to win back my husband’s affection through seduction.  It’s more about not wanting to cause pain or regret to those who care about me.

I am however compelled to say a few things.   So here goes:  There is nothing- ABSOLUTELY NOTHING glamorous about suicide.  I know that there are forces at work to romanticize the tortured artist, the misunderstood soul, the 'fragile one'  who  ‘never quite belonged here amongst us.’  But these are lies, ridiculous lies. 

Give your head a good shake if you think Kurt Cobain, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, Vincent Van Gogh, Sylvia Plath, Hunter S. Thompson, Diane Arbus, and David Foster Wallace died nobly, admirably or artistically.  They died like all those before them and like all of us will eventually.  Their organs shut down.  Their extremities turned cold.  Their bladders and bowels emptied. Their muscles relaxed and then stiffened;their cells were damaged irrevocably and the decomposition process began thereafter.

Some of my very best writing was done in that state of severe depression, contemplating self-destruction, but trust me I wouldn’t trade my life now  for a posthumous publication of my suicidal ramblings. For someone to seriously contemplate taking his or her own life, that individual must be in emotional or physical agony and see no other way out of the pain.   Those who have never experienced that kind of anguish are typically in one of the following two camps:  Camp 1 (wherein the vast majority live) is that place from which people wonder “How could she do that to her ________?” (fill in the blank with one of the following: children, parents, spouse)   OR  “How could he be so ______ ? (fill in the blank with one of the following: selfish, weak, short-sighted).  Camp 2 (wherein dwell the people I am addressing in this blog post) is that place which was created by Hollywood, by biographers and songwriters.  It is the place from which people view death by suicide as inspired, creative or as exercising control over one’s destiny.   Trust me- when you are longing for death, you are far from being in control.

I will not bother to try to persuade those who live in Camp 1 that they ought to reserve judgement and give thanks that they have not experienced that complete lack of will to carry on. But for the others, those who might be tempted to romanticize self-destruction, think again.  This is what it feels like:

I am the apple that’s been jostled and dropped.

Hold me at just the right angle;

I am shiny and unblemished

Spin me in your hand,

 I am bruised and imperfect

Soft and discoloured

I am flawed, slowly rotting inside my skin.

Throw me to the ground.

I have made arrangements with the earth.

My tapestry of rich and royal hue

This weekend, at a First Nations Symposium, I was given a Blackfoot name by a renowned storyteller and educator.  He named me Pi’takii (pronounced Bee-DAW- gee) and pushed me gently on my back to symbolize my going forward with this new name.  I’d like to keep the translation to myself for a little while longer because it stills feels very new and special, but I WILL say that it incorporates the word ‘eagle’.  I immediately began looking for meaning in my new name, and here is what I’ve come up with:

 I’ve decided that since eagles are known for their keen eyesight, perhaps my new name is a reminder from the universe that eventually I will have a bird’s eye view of recent events in my life and will see the bigger picture which the Master Weaver saw all along.  With sufficient distance, perhaps I too will see that even the blackest threads were integral to the tapestry, and were part of a larger vision for my life.

On a less profound note, according to Wikipedia (the ultimate source of knowledge!), the earlier hatched chicks often kill their later hatched nest-mates while the parents look on and do nothing... which certainly resonates with me as the younger sibling of a sister who mercilessly tormented me, while my parents ‘tsk-tsk’ –ed me about learning to fight my own battles, when I solicited their intervention. (Note to my mother and sister: this is intended as humour and has not, I repeat NOT, been a topic explored in my many hours of pyschotherapy!)

As I continue my countdown this week to April 1^st- the one year mark of my status as ‘separated’, I think I might actually be getting better at learning to trust that my future holds more than working ridiculously long hours to compensate for the lack of a personal life, and growing old with a bunch of animals that greet me excitedly at the door when I return home from a conference.

The eagle builds the largest nest of all other North American birds, so as the mother of only one child, I can only assume that I need a big nest for a purpose other than motherhood.  Perhaps I will share my home with many people over the years to come (a revolving door for a series of dependent, co-habiting men? a shelter for the homeless? a refuge for battered women? or perhaps like Angelina Jolie, I will adopt my own little 'rainbow family'.) Perhaps I will win the Princess Margaret Hospital Lottery grand prize showhome.  At  more than 7000 square feet, it certainly qualifies as a large nest.

Eagles prefer to mate for life, but have no problem replacing a partner who disappears or with whom breeding attempts have failed.  Is the universe telling me to get out there and use my talons to snag me another bird in the sky?

Last but not least, the eagle has been described as the bird giving the most abiding impression of power and purpose in the air, and as the bird which ‘sails directly [to places] where lesser birds are rocked and tilted by the air currents.’  Clearly I have a distinct destiny indeed, and my oversized feet, large body, hooked beak and shrill voice will serve me well as I move purposefully toward the life that has been planned for me by the Creator.

I’m Okay (to give) You’re Okay (to take)

My Aunt B once explained to me that the world was essentially divided into two sorts of people: those who gave readily and those who took readily.  Through that lens I am able to see some of what was going on  for years in my relationship with my husband and his children.  They all had their feet firmly planted in the world of those who feel entitled to charmed lives.  Somehow they believed they’d earned it: my husband- because he had a demanding job and therefore deserved a personal life that was smooth sailing; and his kids- because their parents’ marriage ended and therefore  deserved that the rest of their lives be made easy for them.  Or perhaps their sense of entitlement did not originate within themselves.  Perhaps it was their father who, motivated by guilt for not wanting to be married to their mother, felt compelled to orchestrate their lives in such a way as to never have to say no to them. In either case, he consistently took the path of least resistance with his children. I watched for years as he made excuses for them. His daughter couldn’t help shovel the driveway because her frame was too small. His son couldn’t help clean up after dinner, because he finished eating first and couldn’t be expected to sit at the table to wait for us to finish eating.   Year after year, my daughter and I participated in his annual Saturday morning “Clean up your Neighbourhood Day”, while his children slept in and were not awakened to help out. (Incidentally my daughter and I did this even when we lived in another city and drove in to Toronto to clean up a neighbourhood that wasn’t even our own.)

Many is the time I was kept waiting at some pre-arranged corner, because he wanted to squeeze in one more task before meeting up with me (pick up the dry cleaning, drop something off).  Clearly his time was more valuable than mine.  Many is the time my daughter cleaned up the kitchen while his own daughter got a sudden urge to go the bathroom and his son had to take a cell phone call.  His children would re-enter the kitchen as the job was being completed.  Their father would walk by and say “Thanks kids for doing all the clean-up”.  Was he wilfully oblivious?

For years I helped put up or take down their Christmas tree, while in my own home, my 3 year old and I dragged our tree from the car into the house, and sawed down the trunk with a hack saw because I didn’t know any better.

When he moved during our courtship, I stood on chairs and installed all his window coverings while he sat and organized his CDs in alphabetical order.

You might well ask why I allowed this to happen for so long.   I believe I was eager for two things:  1) to demonstrate my ability to be totally committed,  to prove the depths of my love, to be a good girl, to earn approval and 2) to grow as a person, to refine my character and develop my stamina, to test the limits of my love and the limits of God’s love to sustain me while I bottomed out.

In retrospect I should have just joined a kibbutz or some international aid project:  growing vegetables or constructing schools for orphaned children.  I was so desperate to build something, to be part of something worthwhile, and to have a family, that it seems I took the three of them on as my ‘project’.

When I started asking for a return on my investment i.e. the pleasure of seeing the three of them become more self-sufficient, less dependent on others to organize their lives and more cognizant of their many blessings, I was treated as a traitor.

There were many wonderful perks for me in being with my husband.  I loved the feeling of being chosen by a man, a feeling I am no longer able to enjoy.  As enlightened as we claim to be in this era, a single woman still bears the stigma of being left out ‘when choosing sides for basketball’.  I loved being at a social gathering and looking across the room at my husband and knowing that I had someone to go home with when the evening was over.  I loved the little acts of intimacy, sipping from the same glass, standing naked together in front of the bathroom mirrors, him shaving, me drying my hair.  I loved sexual intimacy, feeling wanted, being able to make him happy.  I loved the sound of him getting into bed beside me.  I loved him seeking out my body in the mornings.

Amazingly, while I believe I gave so much more than I gained in our time together, I was not the one who gave up on the marriage.  My act of treason (failing to have Mother Theresa’s character and Kim Bassinger’s body)  was punishable by death. Death in this case was the complete abrupt emotional cut-off from my husband.   Occasionally I wonder who is helping him find his glasses, cell phone, and brief case now.  Occasionally I wonder who is tutoring, chauffering and unlocking the door for his children now.  But they will have found someone else to do those things by now.   The takers always seem to be able the find the givers.

My Goodbye letter to the Arteries and Capillaries of my Marriage

Some time ago I read in a book about divorce that it was important to say goodbye to one's marriage and all that had been invested in dreams for the future. As April 1st approaches- the first anniversary of my marriage ending, I thought perhaps it was fitting to re-read the letter I wrote. You will find that letter below.  I sent it to my husband, and his reply was that I could have any of the souvenirs that I referred to in the poem.  I don't need the souvenirs back. I need the optimism and spirit of sheer delight with which they were purchased.

Goodbye letter to the Arteries and Capillaries of my  Marriage 

Goodbye ...rings that were placed on my finger in good faith but whose promises were not honoured.

Goodbye ...beautiful matrimonial home whose bricks and tiles and wall colours I painstakingly chose; whose window coverings and paintings I hung  by myself, whose faucets and door knobs and cupboard handles I picked out; whose rooms I decorated and arranged with furniture after scouring magazines to learn how to do it right.

Goodbye... garden whose lawn I raked and mowed and seeded and cleaned of fallen apples, whose flowers, trees, shrubs and vegetables I selected and planted and cared for; whose face was once covered by 2 gazebos, dozens of chairs and tables and dear friends for our wedding celebration.

Goodbye... kitchen whose granite counters I chose from giant slabs hanging in a warehouse, and upon which I prepared my grandmother’s corn bread, my sister’s sweet potatoes, my mother’s snowball cookies, and my mother-in-law’s chilli sauce; whose cupboards and pantry I filled with food for a family (that was never really a family).

Goodbye ...sleigh bed and kitchen table and sitting room furniture that I picked out in happy days with the man to whom it now all solely belongs.

Goodbye ...Mexican blanket and macramé moons, Bangkok lamps and elephants, Korean scrap books, Ellicottville bookends  and all the souvenirs of all the trips to all the places I travelled with the man who now displays those things proudly in HIS home.

Goodbye... to the life I once imagined lay before me:   shared with a devoted companion, a lover, a bed partner, a travel partner, a fine cheese and slow food partner; a life in which growing old meant accumulating more  memories to be documented in photo albums, souvenirs and home movies.

Goodbye ...to  hope, to falsely held beliefs,  poorly invested time, to misplaced energy, misspent years and to the pearls given in good faith.

Goodbye... to the husband, the babies, the family, the marriage I never had.

The World Forgetting, by the World Forgot

I’ve had to change all my PIN numbers for everything: bank cards, cell phone messages, house phone messages etc.  They all used to be the dates of significant events in the love story of my husband and me.  To check my cell phone messages, I’d enter the month and day when he first tested the waters about becoming more than the friends we’d been for the previous seven or eight years.  “Do you ever wonder...?” was how he broached the topic.  To use the bank machine, I’d enter the month and day on which he first told me he loved me.  “I ll-ooo-vvve you” was how he said it with tears in his eyes and wonder in his voice stretching out the verb so it came out almost like a question.

I waited 7 months before changing those PINs, and then when my certainty about a reconciliation began to wane, I decided it was time to choose numbers that didn’t rip my heart out every time I keyed them in.

There must be equivalent things for him.  Doesn’t he once in a while glance over at my side of the double closet we shared and remember when we sat together on the floor in our half built bedroom with the closet designer guy who sneezed a very wet sneeze into his hand and then tried to shake ours?  Doesn’t he open the armoire in the basement from time to time and stumble on the air mattress we blew up for making love in front of the fireplace on Valentine’s Day 2007. Doesn’t he glance at his mother’s curtains that I hemmed and hung in the dining room, and feel thankful that he had a wife who could sew? Didn’t he miss me this past September when he and his friends did their annual day of tomato sauce jarring and I wasn’t there to help?  How is he able to just cut my face out of every photo in his head?  It’s like the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I’ve been erased.  I never existed.

It’s amazing to me that even as I am remembering the heartache and misery of one year ago right now, I can still get a wave of tenderness when an email shows up in my inbox from the proprietors of the Bed and Breakfast we stayed at in Hawaii in 2009, or I see the Aztec brick shade painted on the wall of a restaurant and remember that we picked that out for his ski chalet.  I get a flipflop in my chest when I think of his scratchy face when he didn’t shave and his sleepy voice when he first awoke in the  morning and the oversized blue bath robe he wrapped himself in while reading the Star every morning.

Lord, I’d like the ability to do those kinds of emotional cut-offs, but I am not wired that way.

Love’s a bitch.

See what you lost when you left this world

For some time now, life has felt like that dinner party we’ve all been to that lasted an hour too long. Promising, awkward, pleasant, engaging and then … the denouement (which goes unnoticed until the guests suddenly find themselves tired, resentful, minds blurry, and puzzled about when the conversation had become so tedious.)   I've just not been able to figure out what I am still doing here.  Like those guests at the party who ought to have left at the high point of the evening instead of lingering too long after coffee.

It’s hard to explain it without causing each of you reading this blog to think you should phone 911.  It’s just been a level of fatigue that was unprecedented.  Even when my father was dying and I was a single mother and a doctoral student and spending my weekends on the 401 driving to see him,  I didn’t feel as tired as I felt when my marriage ended.  My  very bones were weary, my spirit depleted and I thought on many occasions, that it was time to make like an octogenarian (except 40 years younger) and die peacefully, hoping to hear the words “Well done” at the finish line.  I’ve felt so tired that I’ve asked God to let me fall asleep for good, not actually believing that anyone would be impacted by my absence, not even my daughter.  As the song goes “Didn’t you think you were worth anything?” Depression leads to really twisted thinking. I’ve even made suggestions to God “How about a quick cardiac arrest?” “A brain aneurysm?”  Something quick and not messy so as not to traumatize the one who finds me. It has continued to amaze me that I’ve been relentlessly healthy, in spite of these fierce prayers for an early demise.  More distorted thinking can be found amongst the pages of my numerous journals in which I predict that a vengeful God will deny me death, and then just when I’m back on my feet, or when my husband wants to reconcile, or when I find true love, He will swoop in and deliver my death wish... when I no longer wish for it. I know that is not who He is, but self-loathing and defeatism are part of the depression package.

I’m well past this now, so no need to fret or send me frantic emails, but please do look around you.  If someone you love has a broken heart or an empty spirit, go put your arms around them, like my mother, my daughter and my God did for me. Tell them they are not alone, no matter how abandoned they feel.

No euthanasia for me

Stoicism is over-rated.  I know that my husband thought I should go quietly into that ‘good night’ (aka that special holding place for unwanted wives).  I did so many things to impress him with my ability to behave well after realizing he wanted me to leave.  I moved to the basement couch so as not to subject him to my unsightly presence.  I did not ask for money or help with packing or finding a new place.  I took nothing that did not belong to me.  The movers accidentally took a night stand of his, and I promptly emailed him saying that it was a mistake and I would return it immediately. I signed his air-tight legal separation agreement which  left him with an investment that will grow exponentially in the next real estate boom, and left me with the money I’d put into the matrimonial house after selling my own home- during a real estate downturn.  All this I did, having bought into the idea that it was somehow the dignified way to do things.

Why is emotional restraint a virtue?  I remember giving birth across the hall from a Middle Eastern woman who wailed with each contraction of her womb.  I considered myself so much more civilized to be swallowing the pain rather than vocalizing it. How many of us have seen breast beating individuals on the news or trilling, ululating Arab women and marvelled at their capacity for emotion?  Not many, likely.  Instead we were more apt to consider such behaviour ridiculous, almost pagan.

At this point in my life, I see no virtue in having let my marriage die ‘with dignity’... solemnly, quietly and with no fuss.  That’s what he’s done.  That’s what his friends and family have permitted him to do. Close the chapter.  Start a new one.  No point talking about the past.  Out with the old and in with the new. What’s done is done.

That’s why my blog is inappropriate.  It’s airing dirty laundry.  It’s undignified, unbecoming. But what is my reward for keeping a stiff upper lip? Who amongst his family and friends, who once called me  the best thing that ever happened to him, have argued my case before him? Or sent me an encouraging note? Or wished me Happy Birthday or Merry Christmas or Happy New Year?  With only one exception, there have been none.   It’s taken me 48 years to understand that the more you value something, the more it hurts to lose it, so you should wail accordingly.  You should howl and cry and vocalize until the pain dulls for a time; and then you will have to take it up again- the moaning, and sobbing and weeping.  And again ... until eventually you are finished with raging ‘against the dying of the light’.

All I have to do is Dream

I had a very strange dream last night which I feel certain must have emerged from my innermost self, though its message is still quite foggy.  All dream interpreters out there are welcome to have a go at it.  In my dream, my sister was trying to orchestrate a reconciliation between my husband and myself.  She locked the two of us in a room together so that we’d be forced to look at each other and talk.  My husband told me that our marriage was finished and that nothing could come of my sister’s efforts.  He began trying to find a way out of the room.  Just then a telephone rang and I answered it.  It was P.D., my very first boyfriend from high school calling (the only man/boy whom I’ve loved with true abandon, never imagining for a minute that breaking up was even possible).  The line was crackly and I could hardly hear him, so I was repeating his words to ensure that I’d gotten the details right.  This meant that my husband, who was busily trying to pry his way out of the room, could hear what P.D was saying.  The message was something like this:  his marriage was over and he needed help. He wanted me to call someone and tell that person about his predicament... except that every time he said the phone number, I couldn’t make out the numbers.  He got exasperated and unreasonably angry with me and so I hung up on him.

My husband then seemed to have a change of heart.  In my dream I gathered that he approved of the way in which I dismissed my first love.  Suddenly, he claimed to want me back, and said that he had found a way out of the room and that I should follow in a few minutes.  He seemed to need a head start on finding a place for us to consummate our renewed marriage.  Then the videotape fast forwarded, as often happens in dreams, and I was suddenly sitting on the side of the street, naked but wrapped in a bed sheet.  I was a homeless person sleeping on the sidewalk with other homeless people.  I wasn’t at all afraid because I knew my husband would come for me as soon as he found a place for us.  I only regretted having no clothes on beneath the sheet, and was afraid of becoming unwrapped as I slept, making my nudity visible to anyone walking by.  Fast forward again, and I was stumbling along the street, still wrapped in the bed sheet, trying to find my husband, worried that he wasn’t able to spot me on the street amongst the bedraggled lot who’d been keeping me company.  Eventually I found him, just coming out of a hostel of some sort.  He didn’t seem happy to see me, but invited me inside nevertheless.  When I entered, I noticed that it was not a private room at all but that he had also invited other people.  One was an old woman, and the others I couldn’t see but could only hear their voices.  In my heart, I had a sickening feeling that he’d misled me and that he didn’t really want to restore our marriage, or else that he’d changed his mind while we were apart.

When I awoke from the dream, my chest was aching so badly, that I had to turn on to my stomach and press my chest against the mattress.  It was as though tremendous sobs were trying to burst through my breast bone, and I had to force them back in by pressing against the mattress to block their exit.  It was imperative for some reason that they stay locked up inside my chest, even though crying comes very easily in the light of the day.

The saddest part is that the person who always used to listen to me recount my dreams, and marvel at their imagery, their complexity and their metaphors, no longer sleeps next to me.  I couldn’t ask him what it all meant.  I couldn’t ask him to assure me that he’d never change his mind about wanting me.

My Slice of the Pie

I’m working on a new theory about the source of my misery.  It seems to me that suffering is like a giant pie that gets cut into evenly sized slices and served up to everyone who has ever lived.  Some people get their entire slice right at the beginning of their lives (abandoned babies, abused children) and then the rest of their time here is relatively easy.  Some folks are given little crumbs to nibble on throughout their entire lives- no unbearable suffering, but always a sense that the other shoe is about to drop when things are going smoothly.  Some people, like my father, live good lives, marry the right person, enjoy health, family, love and intimacy and then WHAM!! out of the blue, they get handed their full serving of suffering at the end of their lives, trial after trial, blow after blow until they take their last breath.

I’ve decided that I am the guest at the party who is given my suffering in the little finger foods.  I am never quite so miserable that I leave the party altogether, but neither am I really having a good time.  I don’t allow myself to relax and be fully present at the event, because I know that misery is looking for me and so I withdraw to a corner to make myself harder to find.

For reasons I’ve never been able to understand, I concluded early in life that there was something about me that made me hard to love.  I’ve prayed for insight into that conclusion... I’ve even considered hypnosis.  My husband once called me a suicide bomber, a saboteur, meaning that I purposefully undermined my own chances of happiness by blowing up what was good in my life.  If there is truth in that, then all my hours of therapy have not helped me to understand why.  I don’t blow up great careers.  I don’t blow up friendships, most of which are between 10 and 40 years standing. I don’t blow up relationships with family.  It’s only my relationships with men that get blown up.

I am beginning to believe that my slice of the suffering pie comes in the form of a conviction that I am unlovable and therefore cannot expect a man to grow old with me.  God knows I have tested that theory enough times.  Perhaps in the next life, God will explain to me why He chose this very specific type of suffering for me... why I was denied the experience of having a bunch of babies with a man who videotaped our every Christmas, and baptism and birthday party, and then later, much later, read storybooks to our grandchildren.  The thing is that for some people that would be no great sacrifice.  I have friends who are happily single, friends who are married but happily childless.  But this was my heart’s desire- to have what my parents had, to have what my sister has: children and a man to love me all my days.  Why on earth would I blow that up?  Why on earth would God not want me to have that? Why on earth would my husband not stick around long enough to prove me wrong?

Lines I once Believed that turned out to be Crocks of Sh*t

1.      I love that you’re so emotional. It inspires me to get more in touch with my own emotions.

2.      I am your best friend.  I would never intentionally hurt you.

3.      I’m keeping you forever.

4.      I love the sound of your voice.

5.      I’m in this forever- I am going to marry you.

6.      I envy the way you experience things on such a deep level: good food, good sex, good books. I want to learn to feel things more intensely.

7.      When I first saw you, there was a beam of light behind you, and I told my friend later, that I’d met my soul-mate.

8.      Even music sounds better since I met you.

9.      I will always love your soft round spots.

10.  In sickness and in health until death do us part.

Lessons learned from a serial monogamist (aged 16 – 48)

... in no particular order

1.       You only get to love with total abandon once, so make it worthwhile first time around.

2.       Just because a guy doesn’t laugh at you when you tell him you were a loser in gym class, doesn’t mean you have to marry him.

3.       Getting along well with a man while on vacation, doesn’t mean he’s the one for you.  You can have a really good time on a vacation with just about anybody.

4.       Just because you really enjoy spending time alone together doesn’t mean the two of you are a good fit.  How does he treat you in the company of other people?

5.       If you marry a man with children, you can bet that he will always be a ‘father’ first and your partner second, even though when he was pursuing you, it was the other way around.

6.       You don’t know a man until you’ve seen him angry, but be wary of a man who claims to never get angry.

7.       You don’t know a man until you’ve seen how he handles a hard truth, and how he delivers a hard truth.

8.       You don’t know a man until you’ve seen how he handles being disagreed with.

9.       Be wary of a man you’ve never seen cry.

10.   Be careful of rebound relationships.  Don’t allow yourself to be someone’s distraction from self-reflection.

11.   Before you tell your husband that his daughter has him by the balls, you should probably have been looking for your own apartment first.

12.   If you don’t know what you want in a partner, then you’ll start believing that what you’ve got is what you always wanted.

13.   Just because a man suggests doing your wills together (and is generous in his bequests) doesn’t mean he won’t want to be rid of you 4 months later.

14.   Marriage does not operate on a ‘banking’ model.  You cannot ever be certain that just because you’ve sacrificed personal happiness to make regular deposits, things will balance out.

Dear Old Love

A  lovely friend NF gave me a great book for my birthday called “Dear Old Love”.  It’s a book of anonymous notes to former lovers and spouses.  Some are funny, some are edgy and others are heart-wrenchingly sad.  There are a couple that contain sentiments that are drawn with perfect precision from my own emotional repertoire, like the one that goes “The hardest part is that I can’t talk to you about what to do about you.”   And  “They say every seven years all our cells are new.  There’s some contentment in knowing that eventually the me who fell in love with you will no longer exist.”  And lastly, “The idea of living life over makes me tired and sad...with the exception of living ‘us’ over again.”

For ten months after we split, I’d have dreams every night of our reunion.  It was always joyous, romantic, sensual.  I’d dream I was holding his face in my hands and kissing his skin.  I’d wake up feeling such tenderness and love for him that I’d be convinced that if I could just talk to him at that very moment, the unearthly power of love itself would move through the telephone line and win him over.  Sometimes I did call in those moments, but his response was always the same: "I don't want to be with you."  In the last few weeks, the dreams have changed.  The other night I dreamed I was playing a video game in which his character had to rescue my character. When my character was falling off a cliff, she reached out her hand to him for help, and his character pulled his hand away.  Last night I dreamed he was painting walls in the basement of a house I didn’t recognize.  In my dream I told him I liked the colours and he turned to me and said “Don’t go thinking you are going to live here.”  After dreams like that I wake up really angry. The cure for anger of course is to find someone new and get caught up in all the nervous excitement that exists at the beginning of a relationship... when  just brushing your hand against the other person’s thigh sends lightning bolts through your veins.  When your emotions are busy processing feelings of sexual attraction and your brain is busy stockpiling clever and insightful observations, it’s easy to be magnanimous towards your ex.  “Thank you for the good times.  Sorry it didn’t work out, but I wish you nothing but happiness.”  It also means you don’t have to trouble yourself with a whole lot of reflection either.  Simplistic conclusions will do just fine.  “It just didn’t work out.” “We had different goals.”  “We outgrew each other.”  I’d like to be that shallow, but damn it to hell- he wasn’t just the boy I went to the prom with.  We were MARRIED.  It seems to me that there is some obligation to honour the union by staying single for more than a few minutes when the marriage is over. 

I spoke with my lawyer today.  It will cost me $1400 to file for divorce.  I was angry at that moment (it only ever lasts for an hour after which I start wondering again if he regrets his decision to give up on us) and so, in my short-lived anger, I composed the following email to him but I didn’t hit the send button.  It still sits in my drafts box.

Dear ______

I’ve just learned that filing for divorce in 2 weeks will cost $1400.  I am flat broke and I am sure you must be low on cash as well after all the vacations you’ve taken in the past few months, so I have a proposition.  Why don’t you ask your lawyer what it would cost?  Then we’ll go with the cheaper lawyer and split the fee right down the middle.  That way, you and L**** can proceed unencumbered with the relationship which began 5 minutes after my moving van pulled out of the driveway; and I can stop deluding myself that you are a man of integrity who might suddenly remember that he was married to me.

Wishing you nothing but happiness,

Me.

By the time I finished typing I wasn’t angry anymore, just sad..... again.

Digging in my Heels

"I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength"

This was my daily bible verse today (from Philippians 4:11-13 for those of you are inclined to look it up).  The theme of the lesson was learning to be content with being single again.  I don’t know why that is so hard for me.  I can be extremely flexible when it comes to adjusting to change in other areas of my life because my material needs are pretty basic.  When I was a single mother in my 30’s with a toddler, I used my credit card to finance my PhD. My bank account was often at $0.00 by the end of the month, and it didn’t really feel like any great hardship to wait for my next cheque before buying groceries.  I have a good job now and a decent salary, but my lifestyle hasn’t changed much. I still buy my shoes at PayLess, my jewellery at WalMart, my makeup at Shoppers DrugMart and my groceries at No Frills.  I was raised in about 700 square feet, and then went off to university in Toronto and lived above a Caribbean hair salon where the smell of the chemical hair straighteners drove all the cockroaches upstairs. In China I lived in a tiny mountaintop place that I shared with lizards, roaches and mice and sipped my tea on a porch that I shared with mangy dogs and a rooster. Until a year ago, I was living in a house out of Better Homes and Gardens... over 4000 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms, a Jacuzzi, a balcony off the master bedroom, a walk-out from the basement, the whole deal.  I should have felt like I’d hit the jackpot, but it didn’t feel like that big of a deal.  I was pretty much equally content with each of the places I’ve lived in over the years.   I’ve had vacations in a friend’s half-built cottage with no walls for privacy in my bedroom, and I’ve stayed in breathtaking resorts on tropical islands in Asia.  They were all lovely.  I don’t need a lot to be happy. 

But I can’t figure out how to be happy without my husband.  I can’t do that “Just be glad for the time you had together” thing.  In the next few months, my job is taking me to 4 different countries on three continents.  I am working on wonderfully exciting and rewarding projects dealing with poverty and social justice and endangered languages.  I am getting on with life in the sense that I am not frozen in time as an abandoned woman.  I am not paralysed by my despair, but I can’t accept that I was wrong about having the love that lasts a lifetime.  I can’t accept that I must learn to be content with being single, (or perhaps that I must learn to try yet again to get it right with someone new.) If I am wrong about the feeling I had the day I married him, then I cannot ever trust the voice in my head again.  I cannot ever believe that I am really safe, that I can settle in and relax into a love that won’t be repudiated.  If I am wrong about trusting my husband that we were meant to be together, then I am pretty much wrong about everything my whole life has been about.  I can’t be content with that (sorry God!).  I can’t accept that.  Some things HAVE to be sacred.  Some things HAVE to be forever.  Some people HAVE to be true to their word.  If not, then nothing makes sense.

Hearts are broken every day

When we set up house together five years ago this week, you said we should have all new furniture. We bought a beautiful new sleigh bed, so I gave the one I had to Goodwill.  We bought a beautiful new table so I gave my dining room set to my ex-husband.  We bought a beautiful new sofa and chair. I suggested keeping my sofa-bed and chair and futon for the basement but you said they were covered in cat hair so I gave them to my neighbours. They were new immigrants and didn't have a lot. You wanted a new coffee maker so I sold mine in a garage sale. You said you preferred the dishes you had, so mine went in the garage sale too. My toaster went to your ski chalet. We bought a new fridge and stove, and washer and dryer. I left mine behind for the people who bought my house.

A year ago this month, I left our beautiful home with none of the things we'd picked out together.  I left with less than I had when my previous marriage ended... less than I'd had in all the years between marriages.

But never mind...you can keep the sleigh bed. You can keep the table, the sofa and chair, the coffee maker, the fridge and stove, the washer and dryer. I have replaced those things and started all over again.

But I want my 14 years back.  I want my love back.  I want back all the time I gave to you and your children so I can spend it instead on my daughter, my family, my friends and my career.  I want back my tears, my prayers, my trust and the ability to believe that someone could love me for the long haul, through good times and bad. Those things are harder to scrape together again.  Please return them to me.

I surrender

Let there be spaces in your togetherness – Kahlil Gibran

I have been unlucky at marriage. I’ve never quite figured out how to find that perfect balance between being a hybridized ‘couple’ and being sufficiently distinct so as not to get lost inside the ‘Mr and Mrs’ unit. Each time I’ve started out as a distinct individual but somewhere along the way I always lost myself and morphed into a half-being. That is not to say that I imagine that everyone who is still married after 10 years or 20 years had that balance all figured out going in. I think some people just stumbled onto it through dumb luck, or else they got there after countless arguments, negotiations, concessions, trade-offs, and disappointments. I’ve always been so ready to defer to a stronger, louder or more succinct voice that I’d end up giving in, relinquishing, accommodating and being stifled. I take responsibility for that. I allowed that. I surrendered parts of myself willingly if not always cheerfully. The thing is that after a while my core self would kick back in and I’d feel resentful. That resentfulness would always catch my partner off-guard because I’d appeared to be so agreeable the previous 9 out of 10 times that I’d been required to cough up a piece of myself. I had seemed to be so giving and charitable and selfless. If I’d learned to set boundaries from the outset, I’d not ever have ended up feeling so exploited. I guess that’s what my (most recent) husband meant when he said that I was not consistent with his children. I’d drive home from a funeral parlour visitation to let one of them into the house who’d forgotten a key. I’d pick up another from school on a rainy day and end up driving a group of friends home too. I’d stop my morning workout to find a pencil crayon, a protractor, a piece of Bristol board. I’d put off my dissertation to help with a book report, to print off an assignment, to edit an essay. I’d tutor in French, in Math, in English, in History and then one day I’d just decide I was being taken advantage of and so I’d become cool and distant. I’d do this for a few days to ensure that no one asked anything else of me until I could replenish my spirit. It was the only way I knew how to take care of myself: make a miserable face and appear unapproachable so that I could be left alone until I felt ready to give again. Not a productive way to take care of myself. Not an adult way to handle things. Nevertheless it was also not a crime. It could be argued (indeed I did argue this point upon being dumped) that I deserved the benefit of the doubt... that at least I gave selflessly the vast majority of the time... that when I was being aloof and distant I was just protecting myself, refuelling my ‘charitable’ tank - at least I wasn’t yelling or beating anybody.
Somehow I didn’t warrant the benefit of the doubt. Somehow this behaviour made the marriage toxic.... not the fact that he’d never trained his children to be more responsible, but the fact that I couldn’t always be Mother Theresa. So to wrap this up, let me tell you that as an exercise in determining why I never learned how to take care of myself within a relationship, I decided to figure out what marital union is supposed to look like. To honour the languages of all the countries in which this blog has readers, I used Google Translate to look up the verb ‘unite’ and then after finding the translation, I swapped languages again in order to end up back in English. In the spirit of linguistic diversity, here’s what I’ve not been able to accomplish in the past 26 years that I’ve been somebody’s wife:
Integrate (French), Stick (Belarusian), Persist (Chinese), Mix (Italian), Blend (Dutch), Fuse (Korean), Combine (Afrikaans), Join (Japanese), Interlace (Arabic) and Merge (Spanish).

Growing Pains

During my years ‘between husbands’, my daughter and I developed into a little self-contained unit, doing things together like partners instead of parent and child. I learned in my divorce class last night that this is called adultifying one’s children and is apparently a bad thing to do. Nevertheless, seeing no other options, I’d recruit my 4 year old to unload the dishwasher because I had a paper to write, my 6 year old to hold the ladder steady while I hung Christmas lights in the tree in the front yard; my 8 year old to lift up one end of the picnic table so I could mow under it; my 10 year old to shovel the driveway so I could get the car out. Somehow we fell into this silly routine where whichever one of us claimed to be the most exhausted or the most in need of being taken care of was entitled to claim “little one” status. The little one got to be enveloped in the arms of the “big one”, sort of like a huggee – hugger arrangement. Sometimes we’d jostle for the huggee position, each of us wanting to be the one being hugged rather than doing the hugging. I remember that on occasion I would feel so overwhelmed juggling full time work and doctoral studies that just one little setback could tip the scales – like noticing the water stain on the ceiling in the bedroom. At times like those I’d close my eyes and imagine that someday I’d get to be the “little one” again. Some day I’d have a life partner again who’d fight with Bell over the mistake on the phone bill, or price out the cost of new shingles for the roof. Some day I wouldn’t have to be in charge of everything. And even though my little girl was too young to be witnessing her mother’s occasional meltdowns triggered by fatigue and loneliness, she was not too young to be my source of strength. Just knowing that she was there for me somehow helped me to believe that I could handle all that I’d taken on. Now it’s happening all over again. I am single again. I am the “big one” again, but this time my daughter is almost 18 and is heading off soon for university. For almost a year now we’ve been partners again, but that is coming to an end. I asked her tonight if she thought I'd ever get to be the “little one” again and she said “Yes... when you’re old.”

Under Construction

I went to hear Irshad Manji* speak last night at Roy Thomson Hall. She said many inspirational things among which was this: “True freedom is understanding who you are after shaking off all the agendas that others have imposed on you”. These wise words appeared on my radar screen on exactly the same day as my daughter was writing an essay for her English class on a short story called The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. It’s a story about a woman who suffers from depression and spends a lot of time ‘resting’ in her bedroom as per her doctor-husband’s advice. She begins to imagine that there is a woman trapped behind the yellow wallpaper who is trying to free herself- a woman trying to extricate herself from the gender and societal rules that were stamped all over her body.

I took that to mean that the universe was shouting at me to ‘get free!’ The trouble is I don’t know what I need to free myself from and I don’t know for what purpose I need to be free. I didn’t grow up challenging the roles that society had imposed upon me. I knew that I wanted an education (mostly because I wanted to be free to read widely for as many years as possible), but that my career would never be as important as my husband’s. I knew that I would have children and that I would be the backbone of a happy little nuclear family. I knew that I’d follow my husband wherever his job took us regardless of how content or settled or successful I was with my own life.

I’d heard distant rumblings that some women were dissatisfied with the role of 2nd fiddle, but those rumblings were far off and did not reach my working class world in southern Ontario (although I do remember my mother ‘going on strike’ in the early 1970’s but I figured that was mostly about training my sister and me to help out more around the house when she went back to work.) I do remember some ladies from the National Council of Women coming to my grade 8 class and handing out pins to all the girls on which was a photo of Golda Meir and the words “But can she type?”

But I didn’t dream big. I didn’t need to govern a nation or be a pioneer or challenge any boundaries. I just wanted a good man who worked hard and came from a nice family. I’d raise a bunch of kids while dabbling in some gender appropriate career as a teacher or a social worker or a librarian (surrounded by books!) I didn’t have female role models to demonstrate what a single woman could accomplish on her own... how she might travel or become a guru in her chosen field or be a writer ....or... here it comes....how she might live ALONE. It never occurred to me to do anything but get married after a 4 year degree at the University of Toronto. It never occurred to me to negotiate an identity for myself as an individual. I have basically been avoiding that identity-construction process ever since - for the past 25 years. When you’re busy supporting your husband’s career, relocating for your husband’s career, being pregnant and then mothering, you don’t need to fret about whether or not you’ve reached your own potential or tested your mettle. You can always claim that you once had some dreams and you had some goals but they were thwarted by your obligations to put your family first. In retrospect I think I was either lazy or afraid of failure... and I was happy to let the status quo keep me from figuring out what I was capable of. Happy for a while... that is... until I’d start to feel underused or overqualified, and then get irritable or depressed. And then later, even with a Ph D under my belt, I still thought my finest hour would be as a wife, yet again, and a stepmother who firmly but lovingly brought order to a house where anarchy reigned, who reigned in unruly children like Maria Von Trapp, who pulled together a team for which I’d be captain and cheerleader, who seamlessly stitched together two families against all odds and who was the gentle unsung hero in the eyes of my little blended family. Except it didn’t happen like that at all. My stepchildren resented my rules. My daughter resented sharing space with people who were not of her choosing, and then my husband went and ruined the whole thing by saying I wasn’t a G******girl. I was a failure as a wife and a mother. He sure knew exactly where to strike a blow that would send me into a tailspin.

So now, almost a year later, as the spinning has begun to slow, I still don’t know where to start with myself. Who am I supposed to be now?

* Canadian author, journalist and an advocate of reformist Islam

Fence Sitting and Bartering

My biggest problem is that I am a waffler. I am only convinced about the correctness of a certain point of view until the opposing one is compellingly presented to me by the next person who comes along. That is true even with respect to my marriage. I can go from thinking that the break up was mostly my fault to mostly his fault in the same day. I can start my morning believing that my former husband gave up, was a coward and an avoider but by lunch I’ll be achingly aware of the times I drove him away, said hostile words and behaved badly.

A couple of weeks ago I had lunch with an old friend from high school. Actually he was not my friend in high school but we had friends in common. We have not seen or spoken to each other since 1980, but recently he’s started reading my blog and we met for lunch while he was in Toronto. I asked him why he wasn’t more friendly to me in high school and his reply was that I was too much of a ‘granola girl’ (by which I am sure he meant wholesome, natural or girl-next-door-ish rather than flaky, boring or uptight). Anyway here’s the thing: he’s going through a separation too, and as we chatted we realized that I was probably voicing the same complaints about my marriage as his wife has voiced about theirs and vice versa. When he explained his position on some issues, I could imagine my former husband using the exact same lines. So is it gender? Middle age? Menopause? 'Men'-o-pause?

I wish I could once and for all understand what happened without second guessing myself and without arriving at a different conclusion each time about the prospects for reconciliation. I don’t even know how to pray about this- and praying is something I do a lot of. I subscribe to just about every free daily inspirational email message available. One is called “Encouraging words” and each day it gives a teaching about prayer. One day it will instruct me to wait patiently to see what great plans God has for me. The next day it will say to badger God with my petition relentlessly by reminding Him of how my petition fits with His nature. “Okay God- so you created us, man and woman, to be companions. The bible says you hate divorce. I want my marriage restored, so please make my husband love me again.” Another day it will tell me to follow the example of the spiritual giants in the bible who challenged God to make good on His promises in the absence of clear proof that He is in fact working it all out for a greater good. “So God you say you have great plans for me but you’re not really dropping any hints about what the plan is. What’s the deal here?”

The only sign I can see that maybe God’s hand is at work bringing change to my life is that my job is growing increasingly stimulating and rewarding, but please don’t tell me that my marriage had to end to make more room in my life for my job. Is this all about being the best darned professor out there? Is that my great legacy to the world? I mean I could live with having to be single because God needs me to open an orphanage or turn my house into a school for Afghan girls, but did I have to lose my marriage because God wanted me to be a career girl? Maybe this pain would be worthwhile if the reason that my marriage ended is because, had it not, then I would not have moved next door to a senior citizens' home... and if that seniors' home should suddenly burst into flames one night next month, then I would not have been nearby- out walking my dog-, and could not have rescued all the bedridden seniors from the fire..... well that would probably make gut-wrenching depression worthwhile. But I’ve got a better idea God- why not make my husband love me again, and then make me an internationally famous marriage counsellor who saves the marriages of powerful people who then go on to bring democracy and peace to the Middle East. That would work too, wouldn’t it? Come on God, work with me here.

Divorce gone Digital: The Apologist's Perspective

Thank you so very much to all of you who support what I am doing here in this blog. Some of you have assured me there is value in sharing private pain; most of you have cheered me on in my healing process and a few of you have even offered me your husbands in the event of your premature demise. (Thank you!) By far the vast majority of you have expressed that you enjoy reading my blog and have wished me well. I thank you deeply... and you need not read on. What follows is for those very few people (one of whom is my former husband whose words appear on the ‘Times have Changed’ entry) who do not appear to quite ‘get’ what I am doing. First of all it goes without saying that you are not obligated to invest any time trying to understand what this process is about, but since you are inclined to indicate (via my personal email, my Facebook email and in comments on my blog) that you think my time would be better spent on other activities, I would like to respond as follows:
1) Please do not tell me that it is self-indulgent to focus on my divorce in this blog. It is, after all, a blog about divorce is it not? The title, “Divorce Sucks”, should have clued you in. Two or three of you have suggested that I should make my blog be about all the positive things that happened in my marriage or all the warm fuzzy wishes I have for my husband. So does that mean that if you were reading a zoologist’s book on the Tree Mongoose, you’d send the author a note asking “What’s with all this detail about the Tree Mongoose? Why aren’t you writing about the Pygmy Hippopotamus?” I mean really! It’s my blog. It’s about my divorce. Go ahead and read something else if this isn’t your thing.
2) Please do not tell me that I should not be a victim. Here’s the definition of victim: One who is harmed by or made to suffer from an act, circumstance, or condition. So when someone is hurting, does it make sense to say “Stop being in pain!” It’s a rather ridiculous, hurtful and re-victimizing comment to make to someone who has been harmed.
3) Please try to understand this. Most people who are suffering would like to feel better. The ending of my marriage -which I did not want- has caused me suffering. I tried to alleviate that suffering by restoring my marriage... not an unreasonable solution given that the man who married me made vows before God to remain faithful to me all of his life. When restoration of my marriage was not possible, I tried a number of other cures. I am still suffering but I am happy to report that the pain is manageable now – most days.
4) What I am doing in this blog is trying to navigate the tricky terrain of this new unanticipated reality which was thrust upon me. I am working at negotiating my transition from unloved/unwanted wife to contented single woman. When I'm finally there (and it’s a process not a decision), perhaps my “Divorce Sucks” blog will morph into one called “Single and Pushing 50” or “Finding your Inner Celibate” or “Loving Myself until Death do I Part.” Or perhaps my Divorce Sucks blog will simply fizzle out and fade to black ...when being divorced no longer feels like the defining feature of my identity.
5) And finally, please do not suggest that it is ill-advised (or pathetic, or self-involved) to take comfort in the affirmations of my readers. I have not spoken about my marriage for 10 months even when some of HIS friends informed me that they assumed I’d left the matrimonial home because I’d met someone new. Who does not feel glad to set the record straight? What published author does not enjoy making the bestseller list? What interpretive dancer is not pleased when the audience makes the connections between the music and the movements? What actor isn’t delighted by good reviews? I have chosen a performative means of getting through this private hell, and oddly it is working for me. I do not apologize for feeling happy that I have readers now in Morocco, China, Netherlands and South Africa, that I have close to 4000 hits, and that old friends from 30 years ago have sought me out after reading my blog (Thanks AK, GG, AA, CB, IP, AS, HI, AG, JB, GT: who thinks I’m wickedly funny!)

Thank you for being happy for me- and if you’re not- then what are you doing sharing my digital space?

Le coup de grâce

The day of reckoning is not far away. I am eligible to file for divorce at the end of this month. It will be one year on March 31st since I last slept in the matrimonial home. I am of two minds about how to proceed on this. On the one hand it could be argued that since HE got to unilaterally decide the marriage was over, I get to take back some power by being the one to file for divorce. I asked him several times ,when he refused to consider reconciliation, if his intention was to divorce me, and each time he answered that he hadn’t thought about it yet- which, when you think about it, is really odd. I mean if you have no desire to save the marriage, why wouldn’t you want to sever all ties? Why would you leave those loose ends? He IS an avoider though, and so I guess he could be looking to avoid being the one to legally end the marriage. If that is the case, then if I file for divorce, I make it easy for him by dealing the deathblow to our union. It would enable him to truthfully say that I was the one who moved out and I was the one who filed for divorce, which, to an outsider, would mean that I therefore must have been the one who gave up on the marriage. Et voilà, his conscience is clear and he is officially and legally free of the ‘cage’ which was our marriage (as he described it 3 months ago).

The person who files has the lion’s share of the legal cost, and for that reason I’d rather stick him with the bigger bill, but by waiting for him to initiate the divorce, I feel as though I am allowing him to continue to have power over my life. It will be a simple divorce. He had the legal separation all worked out within a couple of weeks of my departure. There is nothing to haggle over, no pensions, no joint property. No re-visiting of past decisions is permitted. He made sure of all that. He kept the 4000 square foot house and all its contents. I got my downpayment back. To be fair, he also has the mortgage that goes with a house that size, but nevertheless he certainly got the better end of the deal.

I was told once by a wise woman that if you pray for direction about how to proceed on a difficult matter, and you don’t receive a clear answer, then it is best to interpret that to mean that you should just leave things the way are, and not take any action until further notice. So perhaps that’s what I should do here. If I don’t feel a clear sense that I am meant to file for divorce, then I’ll sit tight for a bit... unless of course it turns out that the reason he’s been stalling is that he wants to ask about my benefit plan again. That being the case- I’ll have my lawyer on the phone within 5 minutes!

Marriage Interrupted

I was thinking recently how if my life were a Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan movie (no wait... that’s too 1990’s) ----okay let me start again.... if my life were a Sandra Bullock/Ryan Reynolds movie, it would turn out that my husband would be reading my blog (not knowing the author was me) and he would become enchanted with this tender-hearted, witty, articulate mystery- woman whose heart had been so callously broken. He would begin writing supportive and mildly flirtatious comments on my blog under the clever pseudonym “Anonymous”. He would write things like “Oh what a fool that husband was to discard you. If you were mine, I’d never let you go” to which I would reply “Oh if only my husband would have felt that way about me.” Then after several back and forth responses like that, he would write “You know I am recently separated too. Why don’t we meet for coffee and talk about life after separation?” And then I would write “Oh no... I’m just not ready to be with another man... well I suppose I could meet you if it’s just for coffee.” And then we would make arrangements to meet and we’d describe ourselves “I’ll be wearing a red scarf”; “I’ll be wearing a red tie”. We’d see each other at the Starbucks and curse under our respective breaths that we’d bumped into each other just when we were about to meet an intriguing new prospect. We’d sit at opposite ends of the Starbucks ignoring each other until it became increasingly clear that the one we’d been waiting for was the one we’d had all along. Cue the Piña Colada song and we’d run into each other’s arms with tears in our eyes, while the camera zoomed in on my red scarf and his red tie.
Now I confess that I am prone to magical thinking (how to distinguish between magical thinking and religious faith would make a good topic for a future blog entry... but I have to figure that out for myself first), but even I, with my ridiculous conviction that nice people deserve nice lives, never actually imagined that this blog would set the wheels in motion for a happy ending to my sad tale. As it turns out my husband does know that I am the author of this blog (and is less than thrilled about it), so there goes the whole ‘meet the mystery-woman at the coffee shop’ possible plot line anyway. And as for being enchanted with me, I think the only thing that might cause him to reconsider my worth is if maybe Bob Dylan fell in love with me and paraded me around downtown Toronto, or maybe one of the Kennedy’s, or Al Green or Neil Young.
Isn’t life perverse that no matter how many people affirm you as a great catch, if the one you want rejects you, your self esteem is still in the toilet?

Cashing In on Pain

When I went online to check my blog statistics today (3018 hits!), I noticed a tab I’d not yet explored called “Monetize”. I clicked on it and discovered that I can capitalize on my broken heart by allowing ‘relevant’ businesses to advertise on my blog for which I would earn ‘big’ sums each time one of my readers clicks on the link to one of the business. I’m not actually going to do this, but I couldn’t resist trying to figure out who would want to advertise on a jilted woman’s divorce recovery blog. What products could possibly be relevant to depression, sleeplessness, sobbing, listlessness and so on? So here’s what I’ve come up with : The Top Ten Products I Would Allow to be Advertised on my Blog

Sleeping Aids
1) Ontario vintage white wines (which when consumed in sufficient quantities guarantee a full night’s sleep on the sofa, even in the absence of pillows and blankets)
2) Silicone ear plugs (for allowing you to sleep through the day after a night of insomnia due to having run out of Ontario vintage white wines)

Music and Entertainment
3) Angry love songs (I will Survive by Gloria Gaynor; Love Hurts by Nazareth etc ... so you can play them when you are tempted to call the one who dumped you and tell him you’ll change)
4) Ridiculous Slap Stick Comedies on DVD (when empty cases are visible throughout the ‘family’ room, you can claim to have been laughing so hard you were crying, if the doorbell rings unexpectedly)

Perk-me-Ups
5) Fair Trade Coffee (which allows you to feel good about your contribution to social justice even as your teeth become stained brown, your stomach lining is eroding and your cardiac rhythm is not so rhythmic anymore)
6) Reece’s Peanut Butter Cup ice cream (which – in combining the childhood comfort food benefits of both chocolate and peanut butter- can be readily rationalized as a reasonable facsimile of a hug from your mother)

Pharmaceutical Products
7) Cough Drops (which can be quickly popped into one’s mouth when sensing a sob arising from the throat. With practice, a simulated coughing spasm, complete with watery eyes, can explain away those unanticipated resurgences of emotion occurring at awkward times).
8) Allergy Pills (which when left in strategic locations are presumed to be combating the hay fever that has left your eyes all puffy, your nose red from over-blowing and the tears dripping down your cheeks.

Stationery Products
9) Journals (for documenting your daily pain ratings – on a scale from one to ten, one meaning “I can bear my agony in an upright position” and ten meaning “if I were in an art-therapy class, I’d draw a picture of myself as a corpse with a knife in my heart”)
10) Self-help books (so you can read about other people who have successfully survived divorce resulting in you feeling even more pathetic than you already do because you’re not moving as quickly through the healing process as the authors did)

If this goes over well, I can quit my job and live off the income generated by ads for Chapters/Indigo, Shoppers DrugMart, iTunes, and Blockbuster. Are you with me on this?