Eighty. This is the last decision.
Ok, do yourselves a favor; go read Greg Kinnear instead of me. Fun posts about karaoke, not self-important angst about divorce, and he's always articulate, funny, the epitome of class. There is no contest. Cut because this is personal, not because it's long, because I almost can't stomach posting this at all.
Looking back on it, I was always living on Hollywood time with this marriage, whatever my denials and the denials of my good friends. I eloped with a man in the industry, one years and years older than I was, one ambitious for himself and for me, one previously married; what was I thinking, deciding it was forever? Hollywood time runs faster. You're married on Monday, experiencing your seven-year-itch on Tuesday, the midlife crisis hits on Thursday afternoon and you're off looking for the next new thing by Friday here. But for five years, I believed. Oh, how I believed. Every year we were together, someone came to caution me that I should just think carefully about protecting my heart if it didn't work out, and for five years I cheated those odds, and offered up my heart to a wonderful man, utterly secure that no matter where he or I went, when we came together again, he would be my shelter, my partner, and the other half of my whole.
That's what marriage really is and was to me. Becoming part of something greater than yourself; marriage needs surrender and compromise and understanding and something more than simply sharing space, a real bond. And so I think it's only fitting that divorce is like surgery, and like having part of yourself hollowed out and taken away, and like losing more than in just some breakup. A large portion of my life wasn't my life, but ours. Something is really broken by doing this; something is divorced. In so doing, I've become what's been broken. When you get married, a part of yourself goes to that person, and they own it forever. When they leave you, if they leave you, they take it with them, and no matter how much you heal, you have to live with the fact that you have, at least for some time, become incomplete.
It's not just metaphorical anymore. The lines were crossed, signed, initialed by lawyers, and laid down long ago, but you still have to go through the process of taking 'ours' and making it 'his' and 'hers' once again. Every memory becomes parceled out and partitioned and labeled with new names. If marriage requires sharing, then this is a long process of anti-sharing, of reclaiming things back for yourself alone and negotiating what you're willing to lose to hold onto your share of what you keep. And it's been empowering, and sickening all at once. Some days I get a piece of myself back, all for me, and I'm overjoyed. I remember what it is to have a self that's only my own, and it delights me. Other days, like today, like lately, I look at the wreck of 'us' and all I want to do is put it all back together again. I don't want to give anything up, or have to take anything back.
There is no turning back, though, not by a long shot.
The hardest is watching one another try to desperately prove that 'we' weren't a fluke, and not with each other. Hardest is watching them go with someone else, and I'll tell you, it doesn't really matter who the other person is or how permanent they are. Because you still have the pieces of this other person from your marriage; they still belong to you, and you to them, and watching them rearrange what's left of themselves to fit someone who is not you is a kick in the gut, I don't care who the hell you are. Either you know the kind of self-doubt this inspires in you, and distrust of intimacy that lingers on long past when it should, or you don't, and I pray that if you're reading this, you fit in the latter category.
I have a gift for being open and embracing while putting up walls all at once, like the castle having a party in the outer courtyard, that nobody has a prayer of breaching beyond a certain point; abandon all hope, ye who enter here. My ex wrote those last seven words on one of my physical diaries before giving it back to me. It hurts and I'm proud of it and I want it to stop. But I really can't manage to do it. Nobody's offer of shoulders, however much I love them, can make me ready to do that. I may never be ready again. Abandon all hope, indeed.
I remember when we were first going out on dates, we watched Eyes Wide Shut, unspoiled for what happened in that movie until we'd seen it as our first real movie-date. Back at the time what hit us was the shock of the sexuality of it, giggling like teenagers about it until he'd kiss me and distract me from the screen, let me get lost in my own more immediately sexual responses, in romance that was completely divorced from the raw sordidness in front of us. I watch that film now, and I look at the secrets and lies contained within its story, and I realize I missed the point. I'd been missing the point from the very beginning. I am, at least, wise enough to know that now.
Everything we were is in boxes, and is divided up completely. The last thing I did was put my rings in boxes, and set them on the pile marked 'his'. You can't rebuild holding onto broken foundations, so I tried to take only what was mine, no more, no less. If I held onto 'us', it could never be over, and it's long past time.
Looking back on it, I was always living on Hollywood time with this marriage, whatever my denials and the denials of my good friends. I eloped with a man in the industry, one years and years older than I was, one ambitious for himself and for me, one previously married; what was I thinking, deciding it was forever? Hollywood time runs faster. You're married on Monday, experiencing your seven-year-itch on Tuesday, the midlife crisis hits on Thursday afternoon and you're off looking for the next new thing by Friday here. But for five years, I believed. Oh, how I believed. Every year we were together, someone came to caution me that I should just think carefully about protecting my heart if it didn't work out, and for five years I cheated those odds, and offered up my heart to a wonderful man, utterly secure that no matter where he or I went, when we came together again, he would be my shelter, my partner, and the other half of my whole.
That's what marriage really is and was to me. Becoming part of something greater than yourself; marriage needs surrender and compromise and understanding and something more than simply sharing space, a real bond. And so I think it's only fitting that divorce is like surgery, and like having part of yourself hollowed out and taken away, and like losing more than in just some breakup. A large portion of my life wasn't my life, but ours. Something is really broken by doing this; something is divorced. In so doing, I've become what's been broken. When you get married, a part of yourself goes to that person, and they own it forever. When they leave you, if they leave you, they take it with them, and no matter how much you heal, you have to live with the fact that you have, at least for some time, become incomplete.
It's not just metaphorical anymore. The lines were crossed, signed, initialed by lawyers, and laid down long ago, but you still have to go through the process of taking 'ours' and making it 'his' and 'hers' once again. Every memory becomes parceled out and partitioned and labeled with new names. If marriage requires sharing, then this is a long process of anti-sharing, of reclaiming things back for yourself alone and negotiating what you're willing to lose to hold onto your share of what you keep. And it's been empowering, and sickening all at once. Some days I get a piece of myself back, all for me, and I'm overjoyed. I remember what it is to have a self that's only my own, and it delights me. Other days, like today, like lately, I look at the wreck of 'us' and all I want to do is put it all back together again. I don't want to give anything up, or have to take anything back.
There is no turning back, though, not by a long shot.
The hardest is watching one another try to desperately prove that 'we' weren't a fluke, and not with each other. Hardest is watching them go with someone else, and I'll tell you, it doesn't really matter who the other person is or how permanent they are. Because you still have the pieces of this other person from your marriage; they still belong to you, and you to them, and watching them rearrange what's left of themselves to fit someone who is not you is a kick in the gut, I don't care who the hell you are. Either you know the kind of self-doubt this inspires in you, and distrust of intimacy that lingers on long past when it should, or you don't, and I pray that if you're reading this, you fit in the latter category.
I have a gift for being open and embracing while putting up walls all at once, like the castle having a party in the outer courtyard, that nobody has a prayer of breaching beyond a certain point; abandon all hope, ye who enter here. My ex wrote those last seven words on one of my physical diaries before giving it back to me. It hurts and I'm proud of it and I want it to stop. But I really can't manage to do it. Nobody's offer of shoulders, however much I love them, can make me ready to do that. I may never be ready again. Abandon all hope, indeed.
I remember when we were first going out on dates, we watched Eyes Wide Shut, unspoiled for what happened in that movie until we'd seen it as our first real movie-date. Back at the time what hit us was the shock of the sexuality of it, giggling like teenagers about it until he'd kiss me and distract me from the screen, let me get lost in my own more immediately sexual responses, in romance that was completely divorced from the raw sordidness in front of us. I watch that film now, and I look at the secrets and lies contained within its story, and I realize I missed the point. I'd been missing the point from the very beginning. I am, at least, wise enough to know that now.
Everything we were is in boxes, and is divided up completely. The last thing I did was put my rings in boxes, and set them on the pile marked 'his'. You can't rebuild holding onto broken foundations, so I tried to take only what was mine, no more, no less. If I held onto 'us', it could never be over, and it's long past time.