At coffee with a friend this afternoon, we spoke in detail, finally (it had been a long time since we'd been face-to-face), about what I'm starting to think of as my imminent divorce.
After talking through the details of what's happening, when is it happening and how, she asked me a question I hadn't considered until I heard it fall out of her mouth. What about you, she said, long-term? What do you want?
She meant, do you want to remarry? Stay single? Start dating right away? Wait a while, then date?
My gut reaction was the blind panic I have come to recognize as the body's instinctive reaction to the crossing paths of the concepts divorce/change and me/my world. I let it pass. As soon as I was breathing normally again, I thought: what is she talking about?
What do I want?
What an enormous question this is. What a gigantically relevant and shockingly unaddressed question for someone who has just agreed to an ending of her marriage and has moved out of her home.
What do I want?
Excellent.
The answer that I gave just fell out of my mouth--it was so smooth it felt well-rehearsed, though I've never uttered it before. I said: I don't think I want to get married again, but I could see myself in a series of long-term, monogamous relationships--it's what I've always done. She nodded, understanding. We didn't talk about each of our views on what is or isn't realistic or attainable over the spans of years, a life spent bearing witness to another flawed human being's wrangling with life. We've had that conversation before.
After we left the coffee shop and each other, each walking our own way into the freezing, urban January dusk, I thought about it again. What do I want.
I got home to the apartment I'm subletting. I called my going-to-be-ex-husband. We both cried a little. Questioned the decision we've questioned and re-made eight million times. Hung up the phone. Again I thought it. What do I want?
I thought about the response I had given my friend: Probably not marriage again. Love in whatever form it arrives, yes; companionship; yes. Sex with available men (maintaining certain standards of pickiness), absolutely yes. Commit to one person again forever? Probably not.
And STILL I kept thinking, but what do I WANT? Specifically, clearly, what do I want?
And then I found the answer, or it found me.
I want HUGE love. I want big, huge love. I want love that makes your heart feel so safe and so challenged at the same time, your soul takes root in another human being. I am describing something that I am guessing that I have never felt, or possibly only felt as a very young woman during my first, all-consuming love affair (before I learned that there was any other way).
I want a love whose eyes can't help but pay attention when you walk into a room. I want a love that calls you pretty and kisses you until your mouth gets chapped. I want a love that remembers how to laugh, and that you can laugh easily with.
And the truth is, I don't really care so much about marriage. I could skip it. I could also do what I passed on my first time around if it mattered to the person I loved: the whole public ceremony situation. Get all decked out and invite your friends. I could see myself being happy doing anything in between. It's not what interests me primarily.
What interests me primarily, what I want, is the big love. Passion + acceptance + room for growth.
I don't know if this exists.
But I know that this is what I want.
Hopefully this is a good start.
