Title: You Can Dedicate Your Pain To Him
Author: Duckie Nicks
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Lyla
Author's Notes: This was written before Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce began airing. Since I don’t own the show, there are some details that won’t be correct inevitably. Like Lyla's last name lol.
Summary: Lyla makes a list of the things she wants after getting divorced.
Lyla pays her therapist an absurd amount of money to have him tell her that she should make a list of what she wants. Like she doesn’t already know what she wants. She mentions her dartboard, which is currently covered in a blown up picture of her husband’s mistress Lyla snagged off the bitch’s Facebook. Surely that counts, right? Her therapist says no, but Lyla’s not entirely convinced that he’s correct. He explains that this isn’t about giving her anger another outlet but rather to offer the rest of her specific goals that will help her re-center her life.
She decides the first thing she would like is a therapist who doesn’t use terms like “re-center.”
She ends up doing the exercise anyway. In spite of her reservations, she finds that her weekends are emptier when she doesn’t have a family to take care of. Freedom leads to drinking a few too many mimosas with breakfast - not enough to get her wasted but enough to prevent her from driving to the store for more champagne, enough to get her to sit down and write what she wants from here on out.
“Blood” comes to mind immediately but no…. She has accepted that her homicidal fantasies will never be fulfilled. It’s enough to make her consider antidepressants, but she knows murder isn’t an option.
It stays off her list.
Many things make the final cut:
She would like to have said something other than “You fucking fuck” when he first told her he was leaving her for someone else. She doesn’t mind the cursing, because he is a fuck. A one hundred percent, Grade A, FDA never approved, gang bang fuck of a shit. She starts fuming at the thought but calms down enough to acknowledge that it’s the repetitiveness of the name she used that bothers her the most.
She would like to know how to talk to her married friends about this without alienating them. She would like to have friends who couldn’t be alienated over this. She has come to realize that she doesn’t.
She wishes her kids didn’t have to see psychiatrists of their own. She wishes they didn’t have to have separate homes and birthday parties. She wishes they had a dad as invested in their lives as she tries to be, one who could provide for them like she does. She wishes that she were better able to tamp down her resentment for their father when they are with her.
It kills her to know that she has failed her children in this way, and what bothers her the most is that there’s no way to fix it.
No.
No, that’s not the worst part.
The worst part is that Lyla still wants him. He’s humiliated her, discarded her, confirmed in everyone’s mind that she’s as angry as she looks, as cold. He’s made her that businesswoman now. She’s the person who had it all or at least made others question whether she could possibly have it all. Now she’s the career automaton with an ex-husband whom she emasculated into seeking out other pussy. He gets to be balls deep in some cunt; post-divorce, she’s just buried in shit.
And she still wants him.
The list is suddenly and entirely abandoned. It’s been long enough since the divorce, but it’s too soon to make plans. She’s not ready for new goals, to move on from him. It’s ironic, because she really does hate him at this point. He’s ruined everything. And if he came to her tomorrow and actually wanted to get back together - like really back together - she’s not sure they could get beyond this for any considerable length of time.
But she doesn’t know how to let him go either. She just doesn’t.
That fucking fuck.
The End