The dog was already in my room when the alarm went off at 4:45. I lazed around for a few minutes before getting up and making breakfast. He spent the next hour and a half next to me pouting. It’s difficult to concentrate when he’s needy like this.
Today is an anniversary of sorts. I kinda consider it the anniversary of my second divorce (though I was only married once). If my first divorce was amicable and not terribly traumatic, the second one had the blunt force of a car crash. It was sudden and jarring and made me question my ability to drive. I can remember a lot of details about the day – how nice it was in the calm before. If I try, it can seem as fresh as yesterday. I don’t want to try. Neither of us were at our best that day – or in the days and weeks after. I’m sure we both have our versions of how reasonable we were and how unreasonable the other person was. That’s how those things play out. Nobody’s version is the right version and, in the big scheme of things, right or wrong doesn’t really matter.
As the dog whined from the floor, I spent my morning looking back to see what I had written on this date. How have I changed, grown, been stuck? Did I leave a breadcrumb trail of what I was thinking two or three years ago? Three years ago on the one year anniversary, I was living in Memphis. I was reading the book Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann. My blog post on that day was an attempt to be stoic about the anniversary. To acknowledge it as a day. A day in which something big happened, but nevertheless, a day. I ended that post with some quotes from the McCann book. Rereading them today, they still seem to speak truths:
Some people think love is the end of the road, and if you’re lucky enough to find it, you stay there. Other people say it just becomes a cliff you drive off, but most people who’ve been around awhile know it’s just a thing that changes day by day, and depending on how much you fight for it, you get it, or you hold on to it, or you lose it, but sometimes it’s never even there in the first place.
All I wanted was to be surrounded by another. To be a part of somebody else’s room.
She did everything small as if it was extraordinary and necessary.
I guess this is what marriage is, or was, or could be. You drop the mask. You allow the fatigue in. You lean across and kiss the years because they’re the things that matter.
Quotes from Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
We never got married, which means we never got around to dropping the mask or kissing the years. Ever since, I’ve had plenty of days when I’ve remembered feeling as though I were a part of somebody else’s room. I’ve had days when I’ve remembered her attention to the small things. I’ve also had days when I thought it was “never even there in the first place.” In various posts I’ve written about all of these things, but aside from that first year anniversary, It looks like I avoided writing about this date on this date.
Maybe once a year, I send an email to that ex – usually in the days/weeks leading up to her birthday. She doesn’t respond, and I don’t expect a response. The last one I sent was shortly after I finished the book, all about love by bell hooks. I sent her an ebook version. I said I hope she’s started writing again, and I hope that maybe she’s decided to take a risk on love again (or something to that effect). It was sent in the spirit of what hooks says: “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” It’s a fantastic book, and I thought she might be enlightened by it. She never redeemed the book, so I returned it. That won’t stop me from wishing / wanting the best for her.
The other day I was writing about cleaning out emails and stuff (“Attachment and Erasure“). In that post, I mentioned my draft email folder… It’s where some of my more honest emails reside but were never sent. What I forgot about were the dozens of emails I’ve sent to myself – a practice I do when I’m typing them out on notes on my phone and then want to work off of my computer or something like that. If today, April 11, is an anniversary date of that not-divorce divorce, the month of October for that relationship was the trial separation. We had a pretty hard break up, a warm reconciliation, and then a few tense days where we couldn’t get on the same page. Re-reading a draft email from that time, put what happened on the 11th into context.
Our big battles were about spending time together. I always wanted more of it and would do whatever I could to make spending time together happen. She wanted more alone time and had even said something to the effect that she had put more time into the relationship than she normally would. In my draft email response, I was calling her out on statements like that. I was also calling her out on having said that in an effort to make the relationship work, she’s made a million compromises in doing things that she wasn’t really interested in doing. The email is in the draft folder because I’m bad at and afraid of setting boundaries. In it, I suggest her behavior (just being along for the ride, building up resentment, appeasing) isn’t what I’m looking for in a partner. Every relationship requires compromise – if one partner begins to feel as though they’re the only one making compromises or if they make them but resent them – the relationship is pretty much doomed. I was afraid to say it then because I was afraid she’d have taken me up on the offer.
The hard / honest acceptance that I’ve had to make is that she didn’t have the same enthusiasm and hope for us that I did. For years, I’ve avoided saying that out loud because it’s felt like I was trying to place blame or avoid ownership. I had notes, cards, photos, and experiences that suggested she loved me deeply, but I had other examples and statements that suggested she wanted to love deeply, but couldn’t. “Knowing” these things (I use quotes because I don’t ever know anything) has always sent me vacillating between forgiveness and anger. I can understand and forgive getting swept up and genuinely wanting something to work. I would get angry that she took it as far as she did.
As I was trying to write this, I wanted a better word than anniversary – because it’s not exactly a celebration. I came across traumaversary – which is clever, but feels too harsh. I came across remembrance day – which is usually associated with death (and maybe it’s mildly appropriate). Over the years, I’ve felt both guilt and shame for honoring something that was so short, and may have also been one sided… but then I think about the changes it set off within me: the desire to understand more, the practice and understanding of solitude, the reading, the writing, the desire to be kinder and be a student of the self and of others. For better and for worse, I wouldn’t be where I am today were it not for the events of April 11, 2019. Sometimes, I wish I could have been this person for her. Sometimes, I’m looking forward to being this person for others. But more than anything, I’ve been getting comfortable with the idea of being this person for me. Love is “a thing that changes day by day.” It’s “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” It’s going the hard way and refining our truths… And while the 11th marked the end of one understanding of love, it opened the doors to other understandings.