Dear Reader,
It looks like I last posted to this blog nine years ago. Life sure comes at you fast.
The following essay is made up of excerpts from a larger work in progress, and serves to catch you up on things around Spinning Head land.
May, 2022
Dan and I are sitting in white folding chairs on the lawn at Cal State Northridge, along with hundreds of other friends and family members of the graduating class of 2022. My daughter Emma has already walked the stage and accepted her empty diploma folder (the real one will be mailed later, and we will find that she graduated with honors). As he’s done regularly during our marriage, Dan has showed up for a big event.
We’ve got a while to go before the ceremony is over. Dan is showing me dog pics on his phone when the Bumble notification flashes at the top of his screen. He flicks it away hurriedly, but of course I saw it. I grin at his weak attempt to hide it from me.
It’s not a surprise. I’ve known that he was dating again for a while. After all, we have been separated for almost a year at this point. He moved out last June, four months after I asked for a separation. Bought himself a very nice house down by the Rose Bowl, an area of Pasadena he’s always liked. The dog he’s showing me is his rescue mutt, Nadiya. We are both very proud of ourselves for being such goddamn adults about the whole thing.
“Denial helps us to pace our feelings of grief. There is grace in denial.
It is nature’s way of letting in only as much as we can handle.”
– Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
There have been plenty of stories about couples whose marriage didn’t survive the pandemic. I’m going to be completely transparent here and say that we were in trouble long before Covid. I've lost track of the couples' therapists we went to. I can remember four, but it feels like there were thirty. It followed the same pattern: Dan would be super critical of me (especially my parenting), I would either fight back or become despondent, we'd go to therapy where Dan insists he is committed and wants to do better. Things improve for a while, but inevitably the cycle repeats itself. Meanwhile I'm going to individual therapy to address my part... but he is not.
And then suddenly the lockdown had Dan working from home and up in my business 24 hours a goddamn day. Somehow, I’d held it together before then. But my denial of the seriousness of the problems in the marriage, and in me personally, ate away at me. I stopped going to bed at the same time as Dan, staying up very late and numbing myself on television. Before the pandemic I found myself drinking nightly, starting right before he got home from work so I’d be nice and loose from the wine, and his criticisms couldn’t penetrate my buzz. This didn’t do much to stop him from making those comments. In fact he got real nasty about the drinking, which of course just led me to start drinking in private during lockdown. Because fuck you, that's why.
Several years ago, struggling, I tried a new therapist. When she asked me why I was there, I almost shouted: “I need you to tell me why I shouldn’t leave my husband.” This therapist, while a lovely person and a great listener, was not helpful in any respect except as an escape valve for all the pressure that built up inside me during the two weeks between appointments. Which is something, I guess.
A few months into the pandemic, I re-established my relationship with my excellent psychiatrist, Dr. Dean. Listen kids, sometimes you gotta go out of network and pay a little extra when you really need help. Dr. Dean began to address the psychological abuse I suffered in a previous relationship (author’s note: I am keeping these details vague on purpose). He suggested the book “The Body Keeps The Score” by Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk and I, a perpetual student, devoured it.
When I tell you that I felt seen, heard, understood, and enlightened by this book it is still not enough. Metaphorically the clouds parted, the fog lifted, the angels in heaven began to sing. You get the picture. It was the key to open the door to the truth, where denial cannot survive.
February, 2021
I’m in a hotel room in Huntington Beach. Yellow post-it notes dot the walls, each one a bullet point in the conversation I am constructing, the one where I ask Dan for a separation.
When I need a break from my post-it speech, I curl up next to a fireplace in a lobby area reading a romance-mystery novel on my iPad. I generally dislike reading fiction, but my college friends recently started a book club via Zoom and this is our first selection, so in I go. It’s a nice distraction. Doesn’t do much to change my mind about fiction, but that’s my problem.
At dusk I walk on the beach, practicing my speech. One of the parking lots there is full of trucks and RVs flying Trump flags and Gadsden flags and flags with semi-automatic weapons bearing thinly veiled threats. It’s about a month after the Capitol insurrection and it gives me the creeps. “Nobody’s treading on you, sweetie,” I mumble under my breath, walking in the other direction to watch the sunset. It’s cold. One sunset is enough. Back to the warm fire.
I go to the restaurant at the hotel, the first time I’ve been in a restaurant since the world shut down almost a year ago. The hostess asks “How can I help you?” and I blurt out, a little too loudly, “I haven’t been in a restaurant for so long, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do anymore!” She is very young and very kind, as is my waiter, and I enjoy a solitary meal of expertly prepared food. It is so lovely and peaceful, I find myself holding back tears.
r r r r r r r
The separation talk is held at our dining room table. If a piece of furniture can be the emblem of the last straw, this is mine. Several months earlier, Dan blew up at my youngest child when she was painting a watercolor picture at this table. She had newspapers under her work, and she was 17 years old, not four; but he yelled that she was going to spill the paint or the water or something and ruin the table. She looked at him blankly through his verbal tirade, slowly put her things away, and went upstairs where I heard her burst into tears. That night I moved into the guest room.
The talk goes about as well as one could hope. I ask him to move out and take his dog Pebbles with him. A psychotic ten-year-old Jack Russell Terrier we had adopted the previous year, she had bitten everyone in the family, frequently drawing blood. Emma has a scar on her leg from that fucking dog. Dan always took the dog’s side. It’s hard not to see her as a metaphor.
The spring of 2021 is spent in an odd limbo. We are both determined to keep everything amicable, the opposite of our first divorces. I had expected Dan to find a rental and move out quickly; instead, he has decided he wants to buy his own house. And so begins the craziest idea ever for an HGTV show: Helping My Ex Find A House. We look at many homes in the next few months. We write offers on two which we don’t get. (Yes, I am a co-buyer. We are still married, and I will be contributing to the down payment. It’s complicated.) Finally, in late April, he finds the house near the Rose Bowl. I think it’s way too much house for him, but when Dan likes something he’s all in. (This is where I remind you that he proposed a month after our first date. You knew about that, right?) At last, our offer is accepted.
Yes, I asked for the separation, but heaven help me for being an optimist and hopeless romantic. All along I held onto hope that maybe, with some time and space, we could find our way back to each other eventually.
That hope is dashed when, shortly after he moves out in June, I receive a very flirty text from him. It is clearly meant for another woman (he confirms it was sent to me by mistake, saying “well, I’m lonely!”). My response to this, after some intense sadness, is to stop drinking. I need to be clear for what lies ahead, and since he’s not here I no longer need wine to “help me cope" with the problems of our daily life. It’s surprisingly easy.
r r r r r r r
In grieving my marriage, I’ve blazed past anger, bargaining and depression straight into acceptance. Dan chose to start dating. I chose to do some very intense therapy and work on healing the things I should have after my first divorce. Dr. Dean lets me know that the damage to my nervous system – the cortisol response to being in a state of constant stress – will take some time and effort to heal. In addition to getting sober, I’ve cut way back on caffeine and the 24-hour news cycle. I take some medications and supplements which seem to be helping too. And of course, regular therapy.
April, 2023
I knew Dan was getting serious with someone when he stopped calling to chat, and let my calls go to voice mail. It didn’t take any great detective work on my part.
One day he called and after some small talk, he said, “I’ve been thinking we should go ahead and file for divorce.”
Hmmm. “Is this your new girlfriend’s idea?”
He replied quickly, “Oh no, she doesn’t have anything to do with it.”
“You know, you never told me you had a girlfriend,” I think to myself.
We hire an attorney who specializes in collaborative divorce. This means she represents us both, and we stay out of the courts. It’s about the least expensive way to go through the process, and we are goddamn adults after all.
r r r r r r r
That fall, Dan decides to follow his dream of living by the ocean. He sells his Rose Bowl house and moves to Long Beach. His new house is a block from the beach. He takes Nadiya there every day, where she chases tennis balls and frolics with other dogs. (Pebbles, who was so much happier as an only dog, unfortunately developed cancer and died less than a year after Dan moved out.) They are happy there, which is great, because I would have never agreed to a house in a tsunami zone. Good for him.
April 4, 2024
It has been a year since the divorce proceedings started. Dan forwards an email to me with a document attached from the court and asks, does this look final to you? It’s not actually signed where it says the judge has to sign, so I reply no I don’t think so. But it has an official-looking stamp, so Dan asks our lawyer.
She emails back: Yes, that is the final judgment. You are divorced as of yesterday 4/03/2024. Please see the enclosed conformed copies and keep for your records.
It’s kind of anticlimactic to say the least. That night I bake a carrot cake (my favorite) for myself and on the top I spell out, in walnuts, YAY, I’M DIVORCED. It’s from a box, with store-bought frosting, and it’s not delicious. Somewhat satisfying, but with a slightly bad aftertaste. Good lord. Not another fucking metaphor.
Summer 2024
I get to keep my house. I’m able to take a nice long breath and start figuring out the rest of my life. No, I am not even remotely interested in dating. Dan and his girlfriend break up after (I think) a little over a year, and he jumps right back on the apps. This time, my reaction is completely different. I understand it’s just what he needs. He doesn’t ever want to be alone, and a little voice inside says to me: He was a serial dater when you met him. You weren’t that special… you’re just the one who said yes. When you got too difficult, look how easily he moved on.
It’s not as harsh a thought as it sounds, and I feel no self-pity. There’s truth in it. And unlike Dan, I like being alone. I gave up too much of myself in my marriages, for whatever reason, and now I’m working to get it all back.
So stay tuned. Things are just starting to get interesting.
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| Me with another fucking metaphor |
