I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about it though. Not because I miss her but because it seems like the normal thing to do during a global pandemic. People are dying. Parents, her parents, the people I once considered my own parents, are high risk. I think about them. I think about how they are all handling this. I think about her being out of work and struggling. I wonder if she’s nervous or stressed out. I spent six years of my life with her. For six years we hardly spent more than a few days apart. When the world is in crisis mode you tend to reach out to those who you’re closest to like, holy fucking shit, do you believe this shit?!
We survived the marathon bombings, we survived the Trump election, we survived living in a 31ft motorhome for over a year. We didn’t survive our marriage. Still, you almost forget the catastrophes in life are no longer being survived together. Anger subsides, it’s still there but it’s less a raging fire and more smoking soot. You can’t hold on to those emotions, they will eat you alive, burn you down. When you’re a compassionate person, as much as I am, no amount of anger makes that compassion go away. It lives there, side by side, with every other emotion, like a good friend. Even when it’s not reciprocated, maybe especially so.
It’s not the countless hours at home, the slight wine buzz, the quiet, the rummaging through old pictures, racking your brain for things you used to do for fun or for hobbies that you’ve since neglected and it’s not rediscovering old music you once loved. It’s just that you know maybe for the first time ever, that you are actually not the only person going through this. It’s a fact that the whole world is going through it with you. Not one person is excluded and misery loves company, right?
So I refrain from adding her name to my list of people I should check in with. Mentally it might be there but I’ll never put it in ink. I’ll let it float around, hover. One day, it might be normal to shoot each other a text and say hi, how’s it going? Might even ask about significant others by name and I might even be genuine knowing full well, hers was significant before a piece of paper made it okay. I’m compassionate but I might always be a little bitter too.
Dating after a divorce has proven quite interesting. You learn so much about yourself and others. There are some people who don’t have any clue what it means to have had a marriage and a divorce, they cannot fathom because their longest relationship was a year or two. They think you should be over it by now. They think of it as another “breakup”. I don’t blame them but I also won’t be the one to school them on emotional maturity and life experiences. So I move on. I’m grateful my red flag radar has seriously improved. I can detect egos, narcissism, manipulation, co-dependence, power trips, control issues, low self esteem, jealousy, trust issues, childhood traumas, emotional instability, the list goes on, in just a few weeks time. I’m hoping to get that down even more but I think it’s a major improvement.
The thing proving to take the longest time to heal is the way I feel about relationships/love as a whole. There are things I just can’t see anymore, things in relationships I can’t find, the good in them, the safety in them. I’m afraid to find “my person”. I’ve grown cynical. How will I know if all these walls that have been built are ever fully down? Maybe they won’t be, maybe they shouldn’t be. I used to see love as this destination, this goal, this ball of glowing, shimmering light, placed up high on a pedestal. I was enamored by it, in awe of its beauty, its warmth, and its endlesss, ever-reaching arms of protection. Now, there is caution tape where beams of light used to be. I don’t want to get comfortable, I don’t want to ever get to the place where I think, I will be with this person the rest of my life. I can’t do that anymore. I can’t think beyond this day. Maybe thinking too much about the future makes you overlook what’s happening right now. It leads to words like, this will change, that will get better, it won’t be like this then. It makes you picture a life that isn’t reality. You see what you want, what you hope. Your mind plays tricks on you.
I’m glad I know now what’s right for me and I’m glad I can recognize when someone is toxic and triggering and when I need to walk away. I wonder if I will always view love as a risk to take. Maybe I always have? Maybe the risks appear to outweigh the reward. Love feels different inside me now, It’s not quite at home. It’s like putting on a pair of jeans after you gained a few pounds. They used to feel like a second skin and now they just don’t sit right. Do you loose the weight? Throw out the jeans? Or where them uncomfortably until they hopefully stretch out a bit?
One thing quarantine has been good for is knowing who you really want in your life and what kind of relationship and contact you want with them. When there are no distractions it’s very easy to see how someone affects you. Emotional and even physical reactions that you maybe never noticed before because you never were able to give them the time to live. You were always rushing off to the next client, driving to your friends house, calling your sister, meeting someone for drinks, going to yoga class. But now you can truly sit with a feeling, you have no choice really. It’s the only thing on stage and you are its only audience.
So I won’t be texting my ex wife to say, holy fucking shit, do you believe this shit?! She might not know if I was referring to the global pandemic or our failed marriage or how I no longer trust the one thing we all want in life. To be honest, I’d be referring to it all.