Another man has left my life, a man that I don't actually know yet how exactly to characterize.
A very sexy man. A very funny, charismatic man. In many ways, such a very, very fun man.
In many ways when I am ruminating over the break-up, I want to tell myself that it didn't have to end the way it did. But I know that not only is the universe unraveling exactly the way it's supposed to, but that if any two people were heading for a crash, it was me and this particular man:
A week and a half before two final, painful, nervous break-up conversations--telephone conversations--we had gone on a fairly spontaneous road trip. Each packed a bag and drove deep into the rural mountains of Pennsylvania.
We drove for about six hours each way, did nothing but talk and listen to music and make out and pull over to buy road food. It was glorious. It felt like the end of summer in so many ways.
He said on the drive down that we were staying at a Hamptons Inn, and I believed him. But it turned out that he was joking; he'd rented a room in an old stone lodge overlooking a valley of changing October trees. It was unspeakably beautiful countryside--cows and barns and clouds and sky. When he carried our luggage up the stairs, he wouldn't let me carry my bag.
He won't let me carry my bag, I remember thinking. I actually just want to carry my own bag. This is weirdly honeymoon-y.
On the ride home after a night and a day, it hit me with a thud: There's a rebound coming. He will think about something to do with one of these conversations, and he will miss me. Or he will smell me on some piece of his clothing. The reflexive discomfit with attachment that rides on so many XY chromosomes will begin to pulse alive.
In our own way, don't we start to anticipate it? This makes us behave differently than we would otherwise, if our antennae weren't up. We're taught to sniff it out, right?? Doesn't it make sense, evolutionarily?? That we'd have some sense of panic at the prospect of the departure of a man?
Especially a sexy, good-smelling, funny man?
Could it be that?
Wouldn't it be nice if it were that?
So he ended it, we ended over the telephone because he found an opportunity, and I've cried for a week. Or actually have meant to cry but haven't had the time until right now. One night this week when I meant to cry I had to sit with a lawyer instead, who read to me, paragraph by paragraph, the details of my divorce. My divorce is 20 pages long. In case anyone is wondering, I will no longer be related to the man becoming my ex-husband. He will legally no longer be my family.
The lawyer was only doing his job.
I had a date tomorrow with one of the men I have very enjoyable sex with, and this afternoon he cancelled.
I feel very much alone.
So I sit here and write to you and I know that everything, eventually, will be much better. I know that it is OK to ache and to cry for this man who just left, who made me laugh so hard and blinded me with passion. I know that for all of the ache of feeling my marriage done away with, I am better off without it. All of this sits together inside me.
Here is what I wonder: What will feed my soul instead of these sweet, damaged men? When will I stop breaking up with myself? When will I stop dumping me?
What is there, really, inside my soul?
for margaret
