“A broken spirit dries up the bones” Proverbs 17:22

I couldn’t write last night.  I took a big step backwards and found myself wishing yet again, that I did not have to continue doing this ‘life’ thing.  I am guessing that I’ve come perilously close to testing the patience of my Creator with these death wishes.  At some point He will surely say (in a Yiddish accent) “Alright already! If that’s what you want...”

The fool in me (it WAS April Fool’s Day after all) imagined that somehow 365 days worth of praying, longing, aching for the restoration of my marriage would culminate in the universal laws of karma being employed in my favour.   I imagined that even as I drove to my lawyer’s office to put the divorce wheels in motion as a means of taking charge of my life (“You can’t fire me! I quit”), my husband’s black van would pull up beside me at an intersection, and he’d recognize me and suddenly realize that he couldn’t let our love slip away.  I saw several black vans en route, but the universe was sleeping while I awaited the happy ending.

I spent the morning at my lawyer’s office, signing papers to get the divorce underway.  I was numb as I looked for the little “x” on each of the pages,  emotionless, neither sad nor elated about the prospect of a fresh start.  I left in a stupor and discovered that right next to my lawyer’s office was a hair salon and on my way past it, headed back to my car, a sudden impulse struck me.  For more than a decade I’ve kept my hair long-ish because my husband preferred it that way.  His good friend theorized that my husband must have had a serious crush on his teenaged babysitter when he was a child, so entrenched was his assertion that a woman needed long hair to be attractive.

So, compelled by my ‘almost divorced’ status, I spun around on my heels and marched into the salon and demanded (okay not really ‘demanded’ but it sounds better here than ‘requested’) that my hair be chopped off.  Like some primordial shaving ritual, I imagined it to be the symbolic sealing of the deal I had just made in my lawyer’s office: “Sign here and then proceed as though your marriage never took place.”

My stylist was a lovely young woman who had a vision for my new look.  I suppose you think that I am about to describe the chopping off of my hair as either a disaster or a triumph, but the most significant thing that took place in that salon chair is that I started to cry uncontrollably.  My stylist ‘Anna’ (let’s call her that) embarked on a conversation about how her parents had just split up after 30 years of marriage, and how odd it was to be an adult and learn to her surprise that her parents had never been happy together.  They’d just sent their last child off to university and decided to declare that the jig was up.  Anna described re-thinking all the family vacations at the cottage when her parents seemed to be having fun, and searching her memory for evidence that they’d been faking it all those years.  It struck me that her whole life had been like “The Truman Show”, constructed and artificial.  So Anna, who only 20 minutes earlier was completely unknown to me, became the object of my most intense compassion. My hair turned out to be inconsequential in the face of this confirmation of the capriciousness of human relationships.  I left the salon looking like an 8 year old with a 1970’s pixie cut, demoralized in more ways that you could shake a stick at.

The universe did not prevent me from instigating the divorce.  My husband did not spend the one year anniversary of our separation arriving at the conclusion that he does indeed love me.  I’ve lived a year without him, but I don’t feel strong.  My bones are dry.