Thoughts On My Divorce

I just finished my first glass of Cabarnet Franc and feel as if I’ve injected warm saline into my blood veins, the rich warmth of the beginning stages of inebriation sliding around my insides. I know by the time I finish my second glass of wine, I’ll have the focus and giddiness of a 4 year-old. It’s a gift that I inherited from my mother, who has 2 fingers worth of alcohol and her naturally buoyant personality floats even higher; her peals of laughter bouncing around the inside of her small kitchen, spilling out to the other rooms, making those around her smile in return.

I’m in the process of reading A Year by the Sea by Joan Anderson and, even though I’m only a few chapters in and about 15 years younger than her when she wrote the book, the similarities are startling. Books come to me when I need them; yet I often don’t know I need them until I’m fully engrossed in the story.

In about 3 weeks, my divorce will be final. I’ll be free to marry again, if I choose. My ex and I still talk, almost religiously, but it’s the slow, steady pace of a friendship that goes back almost a decade. Our marriage was something I acquiesced to, in part to stop the nagging and in part to remove my ex’s parents from having any say in her life. Such a serious commitment should not be made with those reasons as the purpose of the marriage.

Our marriage was decent for the just-shy-of two years we were together. Before that time, we were off and on again for 6; a constant battle of not good enough, frustration, and craziness on both sides of the table that was tempered with a like-mindedness outlook on life. But there were two things that had always caused problems: her spells of descent into crazy and my inability to accept that anyone could truly love me. Both took their tolls.

I was most often the responsible one, left to make sure the bills were paid on time (or that we even had any money!), commitments kept, a career moving forward while she dabbled in writing and exploring the magical world she saw around her. The stress of being the caretaker, the one who pushed and prodded her to seek more out of life, of growing from adolescent twenty-somethings into adults with a forward momentum that would allow us to stop living hand-to-mouth caused a deep, unsettled pallor to lie underneath a stoic exterior.

It became so that I had to watch what I said, monitor how much she drank, gently cajole her into leaving a bar or a party with friends to mitigate the tiny storm that kicked up around her upon arriving home. I remember blood and knives and cutting herself. At one point, I began cutting my arms too, so trapped in that world that I began to lose myself in her actions. This was all before marriage and the move to New England, a land she had only briefly visited and a land I had known since my earliest memories.

The move and marriage improved things for a bit. Life got a bit easier. We rescued the pugger Pugsy, she remained employed for stretches at a time, and my career grew further. She would pull me out of the daze of work I have found myself in for the past few years and we’d take trips to the Cape or a little jaunt down to the Arboretum. We settled into a respite that felt good.

And then, the fighting that once was so commonplace came back. The alcohol caused problems again but I could understand why the drink was so comforting to her (it was a way to combat the demons in her own head). Once, she stormed out of the house—a half bottle of hard liquor already down her throat, the other half in her hand—into a blowing snowstorm, saying she was done. I was left, crying and angry and confused. What can I do? I would wail?

I began to work more and spend longer hours at the office. My excuse to her was that I wanted our debt gone; I wanted a safety cushion. These were true statements but, in reality, it became hard to go out with her. Having to watch for the constant signs of something about to explode from within her drained any carefree fun out of me. I became a police officer monitoring a rollicking crowd, just waiting for one person to throw a rock that would ignite the rest of the innocent bystanders into a panic-driven frenzy that would cascade into something bigger than I could handle on my own.

I withdrew more into my work. I was sullen at the office. I refused to go out, telling her to go on without me. I started to give up, my anger held in place by a cool exterior. My own demons about who I am started poking out of the thin shells I had ensconced them in. Eventually, the fact that I no longer was taking part in the marriage and my unhappiness prompted her to tell me she was leaving for the summer. She said she was moving to Maine. I was dumbfounded. She said that I needed my space to find my happiness. I took it as her running away when I needed her. The blame, apparently, was on me for the failing of our marriage.

On the first trip back to Boston from Maine, she suggested we should get a divorce. I was done at that point. I embraced it, even welcomed it.