"...hearken, then, the way..."

In the first post on this blog, I merely stated that last year was the worst year of my life. I hesitated to expand, thinking that, first, most of the people reading this blog know that. You are my friends, and you were there, oh were you there, and it needed no further explanation. Secondly, I thought that maybe it wasn't anyone's business, friends or not. And, that is still true. I don't owe anyone an explanation. But that doesn't mean I can't give one, if I feel the urge.

So, in the (perhaps naive) hope that someone who doesn't know me reads this blog, I will explain that very melodramatic statement. I spent the year 2009 unraveling, making decisions, and swimming upstream as the repercussions of that decision washed over me. I got divorced.

Truth be told, I was living very unconsciously for a very long time. There was that voice, that nagging in my brain, for so long. It didn't feel right. Something was wrong. Isn't there more to it than this? But these thoughts were muted when I answered them with, "Everyone feels this way. No one is perfect. No relationship is perfect. Everyone fights. Lots of people have these problems. It's fine." After years of lying to myself, and for this dishonesty I take full responsibility, I came to a screeching halt, hit rock bottom, and knew I had to make a decision. Sink or swim.

This slap in the face that prompted my decision came in the form of another person who showed an interest in me. This was more than a seven year itch, more than a curiosity after being with one person for so long. It wasn't love, either, but, well, it went like this.

I had written my undergraduate thesis. This experience was, arguably, one of the most meaningful of the past ten years of my life. It made me entertain the idea of pursuing academia as a career, reminded me that I needed to write in some capacity to feel fulfilled, and the topic of my thesis was politically and personally radicalizing. The hours I spent at the library with books, journals, and my computer were wonderful. I savored them. I have always loved the sounds and smells of a library--cracking spines and airy page turns, and rustling plastic book jackets on hard backs. Heavy wooden chairs against the mosaic floor. Typing. The smell of a musty book, the smell of a new book like a new car begging to be driven. It was intoxicating, from the days my father would take me to the library in my youth, and plunging in to it and living in it for a semester was affirming and exciting.

The thesis was accepted to conferences at which I was the only undergrad. He didn't think to ask off work to come to either. Stammering for an excuse when my thesis advisor asked, "Where is your husband? I thought I'd get to met him today," was a moment of realization. And embarrassment.

All summer I tried to work on our problems. I tried to start conversations. And at the end of the summer, an old friend came to visit, asked to read my thesis before I mentioned that I had even written it, and we had a three hour conversation afterward about the scholars I had referenced, and the ideas I had pursued.

My husband never read it.

We talked. I found out he didn't want kids, ever, and I wasn't totally ready to give that notion up. He wanted to end up in Indiana again. I couldn't imagine that. He didn't want to move for a PhD program, no matter how good my funding. And so I made the decision. And he moved out. And we officially got divorced. The financial and emotional fall-out for me is something I can't articulate yet, and maybe one day I will with more distance. But I have never been that unglued, untethered, undone. I remember one month where I literally cried every single day. It was this month, last year.

Things have changed. I cried once this month, after I received my promotion at work and, in a really unprofessional moment, telling my boss how much this raise meant because last winter I didn't turn my heat on. I had not cried happy tears until this year. My life has completely changed. It was worth a month of crying to get to this point. Friends tell me I look so much better, that they missed hearing me laugh. I was shopping for winter hats yesterday and the boyfriend was helping me tame the static frizz and stopped suddenly. "You almost have no grey in your hair anymore," he said. "When I first met you it was one of the first things I saw. It's almost all gone!" Did I really look this bad? Was I really that far gone? Because I was dealing with the internal, I suppose I didn't realize what it was doing to the external. Sure, I remember that I had gone grey up front, that I lost twenty pounds, that I was always sick with a cold, that most days my eyes were red from crying. Apparently everyone else had noticed, too.

I have moments each day when the world seems to stop, and I am still, and I take in everything around me. I see the ways in which my life is finally matching up with how I had wanted it to be. Some of these moments begin with regret; why did I waste so much time? But then I know that maybe it's all so much sweeter because it was so bitter before. The contrast, perhaps, is where the real joy is, or what magnifies it all anyway. Simple things are the world to me. An average day is a wonderful day, because I hold inside myself the memory of awful days. Maybe more awful days will come my way. Yet, today is so wonderful.

Would you be happy! hearken, then, the way:
Heed not TO-MORROW, heed not YESTERDAY;
The magic words of life are HERE and NOW--
O fools, that after some to-morrow stray!