And the odd comfort of facing it

snowstorm

In the winter when it snowed and snowed, I was lonely, but not all the time. I was lonely when we got 16 inches of snow and everyone stayed home for three days. I’ve never lived alone during a snowstorm before.

I was so worried about living alone when my ex-husband and I split up last year, but now I love it. My space is completely my own. I covered an entire wall with corkboard and then tacked up pages of my book manuscript. I bought a plushy shag carpet and every day I lay on it and press my face into the softness. I decided where to hang all the art. There was no one to consult or compromise with on any decor decision.

And still I miss so many things about being partnered, like having someone who knows every boring, mundane detail of my life. Who never loses the thread. Over nine years together, my ex had it all in his head (my therapist calls this cloud storage) so I could say, “You know how I’ve been having this back pain but I can’t find any good PTs?” and he would say “uh huh” and then I would tell him the new thing about the PTs and he would get it right away.

I miss that.

courthouse

In the winter when it snowed and snowed, we filed for divorce. It was the day after New Year’s Day, by which point we’d been separated for eight months. It took us awhile to get all the paperwork in order. To print, sign, notarize. We stacked it all up in a black pocket folder. A hefty packet of papers which outlined in extraordinary detail the division of everything we’d built together.

I took the black pocket folder and drove to the Middlesex Probate and Family Court in Woburn, Massachusetts, to file. When I got there, the lady at the window told me we were missing one form. She explained it hurriedly. She was impatient. I kept saying, “But what even is that?” She sent me away and I drove home.

A few days later, the missing form secured and signed, I drove back to the courthouse and filed. Then we began the wait for a court date.

In the winter when it snowed and snowed, everything was frozen. I made endless mugs of hot cocoa. Wondered what would bloom on the other side of this year, this deep freeze when snow piled on top of snow banks and shoveling was endless.

This winter I had to face the cold, hard truth that what I had thought would keep me safe and secure in life–being a good person, working hard, doing the right thing–didn’t keep me safe. At least not in the way I thought it would. It didn’t take me where I thought I was going, which, if I’d had to guess 10 years ago, would be married with two-ish kids by now.

freedom

But it got me here, and here is not so bad: I’m free. I have a beautiful, expansive life, filled with good people. I have a beautiful apartment. I play my guitar at a lovely open mic just down the road from my house most Mondays. Over the months this Monday evening gathering has become a real community vibe where all the regulars know each other. I get to run and write and sip hot cocoa alone on the couch and feel comfortable, sometimes, in solitude. I have never had this much independence or freedom.

grief

Almost one year out from the split, grief over the divorce is still the undercurrent running through my system. Blood flows through my veins and grief flows with it, all through my body during the day and at night when I sleep alone and diagonal. (Another pleasure of living alone, you get to sleep diagonal.)

Underneath the job and writing my book and seeing friends is the undercurrent of pain that my marriage fell apart under an immense amount of pressure over several years. When this happened, all sorts of tectonic plates shifted: where I live. Where he lives. My relationship with his family, his relationship with my family. Friendships, lost or changed. Our two twin heartbreaks.

The grief is a baby black bear that lives in my home, sleeps at my feet. It is not scary, like a full-size bear would be; still, it is hefty, the size of an armchair. Its fur is sleek and black. It pads around behind me, raising topics I hadn’t thought of. “Did you think about the fact that you will be 55 years old and you won’t be with R? Life is so long.”

“No, I hadn’t really thought of it like that,” I say, stirring the pasta in the boiling water with a wooden spoon. “That is sad.”  The bear pads out of the kitchen again, only to return in a few moments with something logistical. It brings me things it thinks I haven’t thought of, or old, worn things I’ve thought of a million times.

We’ll often have the same conversations over and over again, me and bear. We know our lines so well at this point. When there’s nothing left to say, the bear will curl up in the corner by the couch and say, “I’m sad and I don’t get why this had to happen.”

“Me too, bear. Me too.”

Then we watch TV.

the box

And yet, and yet. There was no other way things could have gone. In the years right before the split, I was living in a box with a lid on, and now I’m not. I can’t climb back into the box, put the lid back on. My life grew bigger, wider. That is what I needed my life to do.

Sometimes to reassure myself I pat myself on the shoulder, literally. Or rub the center of my chest, where my heart is still beating, alive, a box without a lid.

How I wish we could have avoided it–the tectonic plates shifting, the whole of it–but we couldn’t.

This is the immovable fact, stubborn, unyielding.

So the current flows, even as I show up to work and save money and book that trip to Brazil for my friend’s wedding and wait for my sister’s baby to arrive and talk with my other sister about her wedding plans: the flowers, the cake, where the welcome party should be held. Will the current go on forever? Will it dull with time?  

war

To add to the sense of disorientation, as I’m writing this it’s March 14 and Trump has gone to war with Iran because he’s a mad, violent narcissist who is slowly losing his mind to cognitive dysfunction in his old age and we, in our collective delirium, are pretending that the emperor is wearing clothes even though he is naked.

In the midst of all this upheaval–political, social, romantic, emotional, and financial–even now, I’m here, and the sunlight this morning is muted against the siding on the house across the street. The house is a minty, gentle green. The sky has bits of blue and bits of cloud and my own house is quiet.

In the winter when it snowed and snowed, I looked for joy everywhere I could, and I found it in so many places. I threw a big dinner party and made trays and trays of lasagna. I filled up the house with people. I went on some fun dates. I saw some incredible live music, bluegrass at a brewery, a dad band at an Irish pub, local artists draped in fairy lights taking a small audience on a rich journey with only their acoustic guitars. And since starting my new job in January, I kept working on my book, writing like a madwoman on the weekends.  

manuscript

I’ve begun sending my manuscript to a small group of volunteer beta readers who I trust to give me good feedback. So far I’ve sent them half the manuscript and gotten feedback that has blown me away and encouraged me.

The beta read has been validating, not only because people have said such positive, encouraging things about the book but because it has magically transformed the manuscript from a collection of words on my laptop to something real: a book that could actually exist in the world.

I’ll keep sending the rest of the manuscript in chunks to the beta readers, then revise like crazy before I pitch the book to agents and publishers.

I’ve been neglecting my blog for months as I’ve been so focused on the book. (Hi, hello, I’ve missed you over here!) Time became scarce with the new job, and any spare moment of writing time went to the book. The book is a like a sixteen-year-old high school boy who goes to swim practice five days a week: hungry. Devouring everything in its path. In need of an astonishing amount of nourishment.

I don’t mind though. I love this book project. I’ll happily feed it everything I can even when I’m overtired, up late, or squeezing in fifteen minutes of revisions before walking to catch the train to my office in Back Bay.

this is not really a conclusion but

There is something comforting about having gone through a worst case scenario which I used to greatly fear. I learned that you go through it and one day you are sitting and writing and putting on another pot of coffee and humming a little to yourself. People and buds and flowers are coming out, tentatively.

Could it really be the end of the snow? We thought in the deepest part of the winter it might never stop snowing, but it did.

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