Love & Anguish
I type words.
My fingers inching forward.
I back up.
I erase them.
He served me court papers yesterday. My soon to be ex-husband. In quarantine. Is he just asking to be cast as a bad guy?
Officials knock at my door.
I can’t go.
I try to find the words.
Who does that? Issues a court order in quarantine?
There are no words.
When someone shows you who they are - believe them.
He smiled. That’s why we never reconciled.
Seconds before admitting his affair he smirked so fast it might have fooled Cal Lightman.
I forgave him. I even understood. But that smile didn’t lie to me.
He wanted to break me.
The divorce is not a surprise. We are ready. It’s been in process and I thought our lawyers could talk. Why court? Why now?
It’s passed the point of emotion. We’ve been separated for years. And I thought we were miraculously still friends. He’s been fair. Kind and compassionate most times since the separation. It confuses me. I think I can rely on him to be who I thought he was. I trust him.
He reminds me so much of his mother. Sharon was the sweetest person on earth until she poured arsenic in your ice tea. I always walked on ice cubes.
He takes after his mother. God that thought would kill him, but it’s true.
A year ago when Halee, my mentor said, Write a book. I asked About What?
Tell them how you think.
How do I think?
You think differently. She said.
I do?
You do.
But how?
Tell your story. Tell the truth.
I’ve already lied to you once. Told a half truth I wasn’t ready to expose in full. Protecting him. Because that’s what I do.
When I write I am vulnerable and raw. The truth oozes like Tonsillitis down the back of my throat. Ulcered & sore. A blood vessel breaks and I practically drown in the hemorrhage.
I write to seek the truth.
It is what I’ve been doing since I discovered that photo of the woman- Julia - in my living room. She was skanky. She had a tatoo on her stomach. And she was wearing one of my crowns- you know the 18th C ones the Virgin Mary wears in processional ceremonies in France and Spain? For years antique dealers had given them to me as gifts. They remind me of you. They said. I had a collection.
I wasn’t a saint when he finally confessed. Sitting on my bed where he had taken her. I hit him. Not once. Not 10 times. Maybe 100? And then I fell to the floor and said what were you going to do? Leave me? In a voice I didn’t recognize.
Commit suicide he said. And I believed him. The next morning we went to the doctor and we held hands. In Eat Pray Love Elizabeth Gilbert writes I don’t think it’s appropriate to discuss his issues in my book. But this is my story too. A story I thought we would finish as friends.
Somehow in the 61 text messages he sent between the time he issued the court order and before I received it he neglected to mention we are no longer friends.
When my attorney said don’t talk to him, I disagreed, nothing is solved through silence.
I may not want to be with him but I once loved him in that Elizabeth Barrett Browning kind of way. Romeo and Julie. Anna Karenina. Wuthering Heights.
There is a link between love & anguish.
The only happy endings are in massages.
Did you know Elizabeth Gilbert is a lesbian? or she was. After she married Love in Eat Pray Love she got a divorce - god the pressure on the success of that marriage must have been legion - married her best friend Rayya who tragically died then fell in love again.
There is no happily ever after. There are only sunsets.
And life is lived in the sunsets.
I am ready for the divorce.
I am not sad about the divorce.
It’s time.
I am sad - no that’s not the right word - I am disappointed by the way he did this.
Kicking a dog when it’s down.
What’s that they say? When you lay down with dogs you get fleas?
I’m thinking. And I’m alone in my house. The Republic of Toma.
I’ve had a hard time getting up today.
Art texts, in response to a silly photo I sent him this morning -he made me more chicken soup this week giving it to me in a plastic bag when we met at the grocery store and I ate it in bed. He says something to me, something about how that combination of country girl raised, city girl educated and globally chic makes me a force to be reckoned with. He’s right I think.
Wild horses couldn’t keep me down. So I get up again. I take a swig of vodka. And put on red lipstick. There’s nothing red lipstick cant solve.
And with that I tilt my hat and ride off into the sunset.
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