I believe in the sanctity of divorce
Yesterday Z and I celebrated work paying him more money and maybe gettng a ginger and white kitten soon, so we went to Bodlean's [which I think should be the heart home of any self-respecing Serb] and ate MEAT, and then waddled around Soho to find somewhere outside and uncrowded where to have drinks.
And later wine-loosened and mellow we talked about human relationships and human separations and I remembered something from my childhood. How along with their fury and love and sadness and bitterness I also absorbed my parents continued, unfailing fairness towards one another. How in between the shouting matches of the impossibility of continued marriage between them they treated each other with grace and their discussions about divorce and how to divide possessions tended to go something like this:
Mother: No, you take everything. I have enough and you will need it more.
Father: No, no, you take it all. I don't need anything to get by.
M: No but you need it more.
F: No you need it more.
And so on.
That despite their disillusionment in each other as partners they remained close up until the end of my father's life and neither one ever tried to cheat or trick the other.
That soothes me in a way no tale of *love until the end* can. Because ultimately I have seen too many broken human relationships.
I do not seek to avoid the possibility of endings, simply to embrace them with grace. To uphold the ideal of the amicable divorce higher than the ideal of *til death us do part*, I suppose because I know that the former can be attained.
And it fills me with comfort more than any tale of long-lasting love can. This idea that it is possible to treat each other as gracefully as we would like to be treated. To have faith in the concept of mutual fairness.
To know that at the ending of things the dissolution of a love doesn't always mean the ending of a friendship.
And later wine-loosened and mellow we talked about human relationships and human separations and I remembered something from my childhood. How along with their fury and love and sadness and bitterness I also absorbed my parents continued, unfailing fairness towards one another. How in between the shouting matches of the impossibility of continued marriage between them they treated each other with grace and their discussions about divorce and how to divide possessions tended to go something like this:
Mother: No, you take everything. I have enough and you will need it more.
Father: No, no, you take it all. I don't need anything to get by.
M: No but you need it more.
F: No you need it more.
And so on.
That despite their disillusionment in each other as partners they remained close up until the end of my father's life and neither one ever tried to cheat or trick the other.
That soothes me in a way no tale of *love until the end* can. Because ultimately I have seen too many broken human relationships.
I do not seek to avoid the possibility of endings, simply to embrace them with grace. To uphold the ideal of the amicable divorce higher than the ideal of *til death us do part*, I suppose because I know that the former can be attained.
And it fills me with comfort more than any tale of long-lasting love can. This idea that it is possible to treat each other as gracefully as we would like to be treated. To have faith in the concept of mutual fairness.
To know that at the ending of things the dissolution of a love doesn't always mean the ending of a friendship.