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’.