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.