He Husband, She Wife

Growing up, my mom was always the ultimate example of exceptional mother and wife-hood. She was beautiful and efficient, managing to take care of both a house and four rambunctious children while still putting a family dinner on the table every night. During her time as a stay-at-home mom she committed fully to the role; she would sew us blankets, hand-make our Halloween costumes, embody both Santa and the Easter bunny during their seasons, and always threw my siblings and I epic, themed birthday parties. I still remember being shorter than the counter and craning my neck up to watch her mold bread dough into the shape of dog bones for my sister’s 101 Dalmatians birthday; later, for a Lion King inspired event she hand-sketched and coloured the main characters on large rolls of newsprint paper, taping them to the walls like guests at the party.  My mother was a crafty, Pinterest queen before the concept itself existed, and I always idolized her as the peak of wifely and parental success.

It’s no wonder then that when I married at twenty-two and held myself to the same standard that I watched my self-esteem spiral with my failure to ascend the pedestal. To me being a wife meant becoming the housekeeper and cook that my husband deserved, and being a mother meant devoting the majority of my time and energy into making my children’s lives both balanced and magical. I assumed I’d feel gratified with these roles in place, that my husband and I would seamlessly slide into being one of those content couples I grew up idolizing; he the obliged breadwinner, she the happy homemaker. He husband, she wife. Even before we’d married we had established this well-worn dynamic, and because we had witnessed it with our own parents and relatives we were sure that it was necessary for both success and satisfaction. And maybe that was our biggest marital misstep- thinking that marriage was about shaping ourselves to fit defined roles rather than creating a unique partnership that suited our individual needs. Ultimately for us this dynamic we’d created didn’t stick, and because our entire foundation was based on it, as the roles soured so did the relationship. Afterwards, I spent a long time trying to understand what was broken within me that had prevented me from finding contentment in the wifely position we’d established, to see with clarity what had made me unable to fit happily within it.

Perhaps it was because I’d never realized how much work marriage would actually require, that decades of romantic comedies and soulmate chatter had taught me that simply being a wife and mother would equal fulfillment, the work just a mindless side-note. Or maybe it’s that millennial undercurrent that coursed through my upbringing, creating not only a sense of entitlement but also a struggle to connect genuine success with the time and effort it takes to get there- that undeniable need for instant gratification that our social media-centered culture has entrenched in the majority of us born sometime after 1980.

But mostly I think it's about the fact that I never actually asked my mother (or any of my friends’ mothers) what their lives were really like, never pried beyond how they appeared on the outside to discover what they felt like on the inside. I never asked them if they were happy, and that’s understandable because society didn’t either. Only recently has it begun seeping into general consciousness that perhaps stay-at-home moms and housewives aren’t as content as previously assumed, and that despite the idealized and almost saintly image, these roles can be both entirely thankless and non-compensatory, usually devoid of sick days, vacation time and requiring enormous personal sacrifices.

And for some wives and mothers that’s okay; I admire these women because they’ve managed to find happiness in one of the most stressful and often isolating roles. But for me, it never worked; despite my own mother’s success in that arena, it wasn’t a suitable position for me. And I think ultimately that’s what all of us wives, mothers, working moms, stay-at-home moms, moms with help, moms without help, proud feminist married millennial women must remember: in the end, we need to exercise our right to choose what works for us, and embrace it unabashedly. We must cast aside any notions of right or wrong, and replace them with an acknowledgment of individual needs and limits. 

Now a single mom, I’m determined that if I ever marry again I will first decide what being a wife actually means to me, and I will redefine the role in a way that suits my sensibilities rather than the other way around. I will shake off the shackles of my upbringing and choose a partner who accepts my unique ways; most importantly, I will tear down that inaccessible pedestal, and learn to accept them too.

Finding Forgiveness

This healing, this forgiveness, it’s like trying to find a lost stone at the bottom of a river. I can’t see where it’s located so I just keep diving in, flailing wildly, terrified that at any moment I’m going to slip, or get battered by the current and swept downstream as the gem jumps out of my grasp. And I can’t swim- it’s never been a strength, though I’m not sure if it’s really just my fear that paralyzes me and pulls me under.

Because I’m terrified of the water and I always have been. Rarely does it make me feel weightless. I sink, dead weight, and it’s at that moment that I’m the most aware of my own powerlessness. No amount of preparation can overcome the prodigious strength of the ocean, the river, those titans. What chance do I have, with my thin white arms, of beating a way to shore? How in that sea could tiny me find what was lost?

But I have no choice. I have to dive in. I have to accept that it could swirl and suck and slurp me into its guts and that I will be vulnerable to the consumption, soft flesh hiding small shells that crunch underneath relentless teeth. It could turn me to dust, if it was so inclined.

I suppose there’s a difference between letting something break me, and someone. It’s a noble pursuit to seek rebirth, knowing that that very quest could be the one thing that silences you forever. But it’s another thing entirely to allow myself to be purposelessly tossed like a tired ship against the rocks, holes in my hull filling with a rising oily blackness.  I resist that end, not destruction itself but destruction that serves only to recycle me. My skeleton becoming someone else’s walls, or floor.

My obliteration will be hard fought, hard won. And I will resist my resistance; I will allow my form to fold under more powerful hands than yours because I believe that true freedom can only be purchased with the currency of my current shape. Maybe I sold it too cheaply before, but I know that what’s left still retains a flickering value.

Perhaps then I will wake up, not in a cascading coffin but on a dry shore. And there will be warm sun, and green grass between my toes. A lightness that makes me dance. Maybe I’ll find myself high up somewhere, because this time if I’m going to put down roots I’d like it to be in a place that’s safe from the flood. There’s comfort in having that firm, jutting outcrop underneath your feet, where even the most robust gust of wind can’t shake my gravity.

Up there I’ll be a fresh peach, all juice and sweetness. Like the flowers and the ferns I will heal in the heat, and my new blood will move smoothly under my sunset skin like it used to. And my lungs will fill with the exhalations of the elevation, a velvety bloom in my throat. I’ll touch the sky and it’ll embrace me like the current never did, lifting where the swirling sea sunk.

Up there I’ll finally learn to float, but this time the water won’t touch me.

When The One isn't The One

     I remember all the details of my wedding- the soft lace dress I’d loved instantly before I’d ever tried it on; the red roses that were so important to me to include; the reception hall I stayed up all night decorating the evening before. But mostly, I remember the unbearably cold March wind that left myself and all my bridesmaids shivering violently during our outside, lakeside photos. I think that coldness stayed with me that whole day, beyond the pictures and all through our distant and unaffectionate reception that my husband and I cut out of early. It stayed with me even as I slipped under the scalding bath water when we arrived home later that night, our car full of gifts but our hearts strangely empty. I cried in the tub then; maybe it was the hormones my unexpected twin pregnancy was firing off in my system, but it felt more like a massive sense of uncertainty and disappointment.

     I loved my husband then, and I love him even more now as my friend and the father of my children. I don’t blame him for things happening the way that they did- how could I, when I think of all those nights he slept on a hospital floor during my preterm labour, or how he held a vomit tray for me during my caesarean, or the fact that he embraced fatherhood better than any other dad I met during our time in the NICU? I was so scared of breaking my tiny babies that for a while after they were born I rarely touched them- my husband, on the other hand, changed every hospital diaper for at least the first month that we were there. He was the primary bath-giver to our girls, tenderly soaping their skin folds that were limp and wrinkled rather than plump, and taped the palm-sized preemie diapers over their fragile forms. He is such a good man, full of warmth, and kindness, and patience, and loves our children unconditionally.

     But he’s not The One.

     I wish he could have been- God, I tried for years to make him into my person or to make myself his. He was my best friend, but as a romantic partner it was always so hard. However, I couldn’t give up, so instead I gave up the things that I believed in. I tried to change myself to fit the marriage, but my mind and body resisted so fiercely; I found that I was at war with my instincts, fighting against my very being. Depression sunk in, and while I smiled so hard on the outside, on the inside I was drowning. I asked myself endlessly, “is this all there is?”

     
     Though I went back to school, spent more time with friends and family, exercised, endlessly tried to self-improve, and read and read and read and prayed and prayed and prayed, nothing could prevent my slow slide into misery and monotony. I began to have anxiety attacks of which I could never properly identify the origin. My marriage felt like a tumor, slowly but surely suffocating me, a snuffer closing in on my flame. Or maybe it was consuming me a bit at a time- it’s hard to say really, except that I was undeniably disappearing.

     Maybe it’s because I got married when I was 22, though I suppose age is just a number. It really breaks down to the fact that I had almost no schooling, no real work experience, no travel experience, hell no real life experience to speak of when I decided who I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. When I got married, I didn’t even know how to drive- my independence was an illusion, and I was happy to accept it. But I’ve grown since then, grown so much that for years I’ve been pushing the binds of my marriage, constantly rearranging myself to find a comfortable position (and never really succeeding).

     And even though we’ve finally decided to end it, that doesn’t mean I’m relieved of the pain. I’m heartbroken, and especially disillusioned, a feeling that drives like a freight train right into your guts and keeps coming, each car a new and separate blow.

     But I see the light. Or more specifically, I see this rainbow explosion of happy emojis bursting and firing sparkly joy shrapnel all over my future. I know it’s coming, and I know one day I’ll wake up and feel like I’m finally in the right place at the right time, exactly where I’m intended to be. A day where instead of wondering “is this all there is?” I’ll think, “this is what it’s all about.” And mistakes aside, that, I think, is all that really matters.

When The One isn't The One

     I remember all the details of my wedding- the soft lace dress I’d loved instantly before I’d ever tried it on; the red roses that were so important to me to include; the reception hall I stayed up all night decorating the evening before. But mostly, I remember the unbearably cold March wind that left myself and all my bridesmaids shivering violently during our outside, lakeside photos. I think that coldness stayed with me that whole day, beyond the pictures and all through our distant and unaffectionate reception that my husband and I cut out of early. It stayed with me even as I slipped under the scalding bath water when we arrived home later that night, our car full of gifts but our hearts strangely empty. I cried in the tub then; maybe it was the hormones my unexpected twin pregnancy was firing off in my system, but it felt more like a massive sense of uncertainty and disappointment.

     I loved my husband then, and I love him even more now as my friend and the father of my children. I don’t blame him for things happening the way that they did- how could I, when I think of all those nights he slept on a hospital floor during my preterm labour, or how he held a vomit tray for me during my caesarean, or the fact that he embraced fatherhood better than any other dad I met during our time in the NICU? I was so scared of breaking my tiny babies that for a while after they were born I rarely touched them- my husband, on the other hand, changed every hospital diaper for at least the first month that we were there. He was the primary bath-giver to our girls, tenderly soaping their skin folds that were limp and wrinkled rather than plump, and taped the palm-sized preemie diapers over their fragile forms. He is such a good man, full of warmth, and kindness, and patience, and loves our children unconditionally.

But he’s not The One.

     I wish he could have been- God, I tried for years to make him into my person or to make myself his. He was my best friend, but as a romantic partner it was always so hard. However, I couldn’t give up, so instead I gave up the things that I believed in. I tried to change myself to fit the marriage, but my mind and body resisted so fiercely; I found that I was at war with my instincts, fighting against my very being. Depression sunk in, and while I smiled so hard on the outside, on the inside I was drowning. I asked myself endlessly, “is this all there is?”

     Though I went back to school, spent more time with friends and family, exercised, endlessly tried to self-improve, and read and read and read and prayed and prayed and prayed, nothing could prevent my slow slide into misery and monotony. I began to have anxiety attacks of which I could never properly identify the origin. My marriage felt like a tumor, slowly but surely suffocating me, a snuffer closing in on my flame. Or maybe it was consuming me a bit at a time- it’s hard to say really, except that I was undeniably disappearing.

     Maybe it’s because I got married when I was 22, though I suppose age is just a number. It really breaks down to the fact that I had almost no schooling, no real work experience, no travel experience, hell no real life experience to speak of when I decided who I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. When I got married, I didn’t even know how to drive- my independence was an illusion, and I was happy to accept it. But I’ve grown since then, grown so much that for years I’ve been pushing the binds of my marriage, constantly rearranging myself to find a comfortable position (and never really succeeding).

     And even though we’ve finally decided to end it, that doesn’t mean I’m relieved of the pain. I’m heartbroken, and especially disillusioned, a feeling that drives like a freight train right into your guts and keeps coming, each car a new and separate blow.

     But I see the light. Or more specifically, I see this rainbow explosion of happy emojis bursting and firing sparkly joy shrapnel all over my future. I know it’s coming, and I know one day I’ll wake up and feel like I’m finally in the right place at the right time, exactly where I’m intended to be. A day where instead of wondering “is this all there is?” I’ll think, “this is what it’s all about.” And mistakes aside, that, I think, is all that really matters.

The Big BaD WorD

Growing up, “divorce” was always such scary word to me- I remember clearly in elementary school hearing that a friend’s parents were separating, and I was horrified. To utter “divorce” in the society I was raised in was on par with the most offensive curses, and its syllables were always conveyed in hushed, appropriately disapproving tones. The pervading, unquestionable impression that divorce always seemed to give was one of failure and ultimately ruin; it was a breakdown of a family, of traditional values, and perhaps even the collapse of our entire comfortable society as we knew it. I certainly didn’t envy the children of divorced parents− like many, I wondered if these peers of mine were perhaps disturbed or, even worse, misfits as a result of their experience.

Such is the conceit that breeds within a primarily upper-middle class religious community like the one that I grew up in, and I languished in it. Divorced families and their children were broken, and the parents had failed to honour their commitments. They’d given up, or hadn’t tried hard enough, and obviously didn’t understand the work that a good marriage takes. Rarely did I witness sympathy for the divorcees, and even less often for the wife in question; the widespread belief was either that she’d “abandoned” her partner and deserved no such compassion, or that she’d simply failed to keep him sufficiently happy and had forced him to leave.

It took my own marriage ending for me to realize that my arrogance did not make me invulnerable. I was shocked and devastated as I watched it crumble, and I tried to the point of exhaustion and depression to save it. Our breakup made me question my own capacity for commitment and my real motivations; no one could have grilled me as rigorously and ruthlessly as I grilled myself. And in horror, it also made me aware of my previous disdain towards divorcing couples, or my surprise (and perhaps glee) over the years when a celebrity relationship broke down the middle. After all, tabloids are always more exciting when there’s a couple separated by a large rip across the cover. To many, divorce is entertainment in the same way a scary movie is, because it allows us to witness our deepest fears without them actually touching us. Until I split with my husband, I’d never realized those fracturing couples were real people rather than characters.

My own divorce process has also helped me to see that expressing shock at a couple’s separation is tactless at best and ignorant at the worst. After all, it’s like starting a book on the last page and saying that the ending surprised you. Why do we all assume that we should have seen it coming? Regardless of how close you are to a couple, you are not owed a timeline of their progress (or lack thereof). They are not required to fight in front of you, or attack each other on a more public forum so that you’re prepared for a divorce announcement. They don’t need to publish a transcript of their arguments for your reading pleasure. There is no law that says a couple must broadcast the gradual breakdown of their marriage, nothing that requires them to hold up the quilt and show all the widening holes so you more easily accept the inevitable unraveling.

Because that’s one thing I’ve learned about separation and divorce; there are no rules, and there’s no guidebook for how to survive it (“Divorce for Dummies” doesn’t count). All I have to lead me in life is my heart and my instincts, that fierce pull forward, an extension of my intestines that guides me even when I’m stumbling blindly through the dark. I might fall along the way, and I’ll certainly suffer, but I can’t let go of what I know to be my truth and live someone else’s so that I’ll receive acceptance and approval. Point blank, I refuse to wear a dress that makes me uncomfortable simply because other people say it looks nice. And I will not allow others to tell me that our separation is a tragedy either; while it may be distressing in the short-term, allowing a garment to suffocate me so that I can meet others' expectations is a far sadder story. 

Divorce, I’ve realized does not indicate failure, but instead an ability to recognize when something is no longer serving you. It’s self-awareness, honesty, and respect not only for the person you are but also for the person that you strive to be. It’s the deepest type of self-love that there is because it requires undergoing enormous sacrifice and suffering without losing sight of why you’re tearing yourself apart. It’s a gruelling quest in the pursuit of true, unfettered happiness, and I can’t be ashamed of that.

All I can do, all anyone experiencing this can do is to hold fast to the things that make us joyful, and to let go of the things that don’t. And so I will pour myself into my children, and the friends and family who’ve stood beside us not in condemnation but as a crutch. I will breathe deeply, and cling fiercely to my optimism, and believe in love even when I have every reason not to. I will do my best not to judge others experiencing this painful uncoupling, and I will acknowledge that I haven’t read their story; my support will not be conditional on whether they’ve confided in me. And most importantly, I’ll have faith and commitment; faith that following my heart is the right thing to do, and commitment to being the happiest, most complete version of myself that I can be. Believe it or not, as I’ve recently learned, those qualities aren’t simply reserved for those still bound in matrimony.