On Divorce

It has been one year since the truck drove away- one half of our life piled in the back, and me left standing in the apartment with the rest. One year since that beautiful, sunny, cherry blossoms-in-the-park day, obscene to me in its shining pink aliveness. It was a day not unlike today, a day to start shiva, and the only time I thought I might literally never get up again.

One year later and I’ve walked continents of the earth and mind alike. Yet today the thought is oddly similar. An echo that says simply and firmly, I cannot do this. I cannot. In the last year I learned to traverse the loneliness, like the stoic bare forest in winter, loneliness like the middle of the sea. I hopped the knife-edge of this thing and balanced, learned to walk without cutting my feet. I know now that I will fall to neither side- not insanity on the left, not self-immolation on the right.

And yet, this next thing comes like a wall, like Check Point Charlie without any papers, and I don’t know how to slip through.

You see, I do not know how this is done. How one reaches across the ravine and picks up the hand of another. Again. It is a combination of forgetting, and having never really known how. I have forgotten how to get it out there, put it on, and pile it high. Forgotten how to catch a glimpse, to wink, to look slyly and smile. I have forgotten how to banter, to exchange wit, to touch an arm and laugh. And more so, I have forgotten what it feels like to want these things, not in the abstract of a late-night insomniac musing, but in the instant that it actually occurs. To want them with the carefree spontaneity that comes when it’s all reciprocal, and right there, in the moment of happening.

At the same time, I have never really known how, at least not as it must be now, when it has to be about wanting, more than needing. When it must be, for me, as much about being the chooser as the chosen. I don’t know the steps one takes as a woman, rather than as a girl, or how one plays while lacking tolerance or taste for games- when the whole thing is cast everywhere, from the online sites to the bars, as a giant game of catch-as-catch-can.

I don’t know how to do this.

I don’t know how to do this when the truth is, I am afraid that I may be permanently broken. I have a fissure now, like a hairline crack or the faded imprint of a letter across my chest. I will never be new again. On the good days my failure gives me clarity, depth, and an air of worldly knowing. On the bad days, it puts me at the back of the shelf, dusty with all the other chipped bits of crockery.

I don’t know how to do this when the truth is, my internal compass, my gut, my instinct for these things seems to always fail me. Since junior high it seems sometimes, too much time wasted on false dopamine-high-crushes that turned out to be no more than patterns in the wind. And now, at either extreme, the needle fails still, reading kindness as bewitchery, and interest as lechery. I need a GPS but have been given a sun-dial instead.

No, I cannot do this.

Oh, winter! Won’t you just rain some more? Let me stay wrapped inside a little longer, content with my books, my cups of tea, and the dog snoring next to me.

Ahh, but the truth is, the daffodils are nodding and insistent, and the tulips are rioting in their beds. Jacket-less arms swing on Broadway, the playgrounds overflow, and today I saw the chairs out, stacked and ready, at the outdoor bar in Riverside Park.

It is Spring and I must learn to step outside, into the warm evening air.