I was talking to someone the other night, someone who used to be married and isn't anymore. I'm almost at an age where, sadly, my own divorce is less interesting novelty and more shared experience. The CDC tells me that when women get married between 20-24 (I was 23), the likelihood of divorce after 72* months is 19%. That was according to data gathered in 1995. I wonder if the rates are even higher now.
It was interesting how he spoke about marriage and life after marriage. He said, "I was very happily married." I find that sentence both beautiful and tragic. Because really, how many people say, "we" are happily married, all the while forgetting that each of us is a universe unto ourselves, an entire separate reality? Even after the confrontation and the loss, our own reality is slow to change. He still thinks of himself as part of a pair, but his other half is missing.
My marriage having ended long ago, I'm not sure I remember what it feels like to be part of a pair. Sometimes I think I long for an idea that's mostly fantasy and a nostalgia for something my senses remember but my mind has forgotten. The familiar smell of someone else on your pillow, the warmth of a shared shower, the embrace of forgiveness after a fight, the moment you realize you don't have to try to remember their favorite song, biggest pet peeve, most cherished memory. When someone else feels like home.
I long for that on days like today, days when I come home and my roommate has been out of town for 4 weeks and Spencerificus seems tiny and entirely unable to help me fill all the empty space in this house. I sit on the porch and watch the neighbors with their kids, working in their yards, and I feel content, but there's a nagging emptiness that never seems to go away.
Anyone who knows me, anyone who's read just about anything I've ever written, you know that a huge part of my life is about family and what family means and fighting to feel comfortable being alone with myself when the idea of family is elusive. And even though I'm kind of sad about this sometimes, lonely, I think I'm at the point where I'm as solitary as I want to be. I don't want to get more comfortable with being alone. I like the hope.
My friend, the divorced person of mystery, said he has a spot in his life that someone walked away from and he's always wondering about a new person's relationship to that spot. Spot is such a specific term. I don't have a spot, I have a space. It's a much more general concept. However, the desire is fundamentally the same. We tend to be so ashamed of this kind of thing, of longing, of loneliness. But how can something so fundamental be shameful?
I have a space in my life. Someday someone will fill it, and as Cary Ann Hearst sings, "We'll be together every day and night. We'll have a miserable life." I don't want to forget to be excited about the possibility of hanging my heart on someone's barbed wire fence.
* I'm 29 now, married at 23, so 29 yo - 23 yo = 6 x 12 = 72 months.
It was interesting how he spoke about marriage and life after marriage. He said, "I was very happily married." I find that sentence both beautiful and tragic. Because really, how many people say, "we" are happily married, all the while forgetting that each of us is a universe unto ourselves, an entire separate reality? Even after the confrontation and the loss, our own reality is slow to change. He still thinks of himself as part of a pair, but his other half is missing.
My marriage having ended long ago, I'm not sure I remember what it feels like to be part of a pair. Sometimes I think I long for an idea that's mostly fantasy and a nostalgia for something my senses remember but my mind has forgotten. The familiar smell of someone else on your pillow, the warmth of a shared shower, the embrace of forgiveness after a fight, the moment you realize you don't have to try to remember their favorite song, biggest pet peeve, most cherished memory. When someone else feels like home.
I long for that on days like today, days when I come home and my roommate has been out of town for 4 weeks and Spencerificus seems tiny and entirely unable to help me fill all the empty space in this house. I sit on the porch and watch the neighbors with their kids, working in their yards, and I feel content, but there's a nagging emptiness that never seems to go away.
Anyone who knows me, anyone who's read just about anything I've ever written, you know that a huge part of my life is about family and what family means and fighting to feel comfortable being alone with myself when the idea of family is elusive. And even though I'm kind of sad about this sometimes, lonely, I think I'm at the point where I'm as solitary as I want to be. I don't want to get more comfortable with being alone. I like the hope.
My friend, the divorced person of mystery, said he has a spot in his life that someone walked away from and he's always wondering about a new person's relationship to that spot. Spot is such a specific term. I don't have a spot, I have a space. It's a much more general concept. However, the desire is fundamentally the same. We tend to be so ashamed of this kind of thing, of longing, of loneliness. But how can something so fundamental be shameful?
I have a space in my life. Someday someone will fill it, and as Cary Ann Hearst sings, "We'll be together every day and night. We'll have a miserable life." I don't want to forget to be excited about the possibility of hanging my heart on someone's barbed wire fence.
* I'm 29 now, married at 23, so 29 yo - 23 yo = 6 x 12 = 72 months.
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