Mediation with a Stranger

art by MarlinaVera--on Etsy

I've got one foot in Divorceville since the mediation last Saturday--like I've blown out a flip-flop and can't quite limp back over the line into Margaritaville. I've felt shitty all week and on top of that, felt shitty about feeling shitty because, well, there's good stuff going on too, and I want to punch myself right between the eyes when I focus on the negative.

THIS piece in the Sunday New York Times explains a lot. Maybe the person who wrote it bored a hole into my head and has been walking around in there--you know, making herself at home, ordering out for pizza, drinking my gin, and getting comfortable on my cerebral couch. Here's an excerpt in which the essayist, Anna Fells, writes about the difference between the betrayer and the betrayed:

And to an astonishing extent, the social blowback for such miscreants is often transient and relatively minor. They can change! Our culture, in fact, wholeheartedly supports such “new beginnings” — even celebrates them. It has a soft spot for the prodigal sons and daughters who set about repairing their ways, for tales of people starting over: reformed addicts, unfaithful spouses who rededicate themselves to family, convicted felons who find redemption in religion. Talk shows thrive on these tales. Perhaps it’s part of our powerful national belief in self-help and self-creation. It’s never too late to start anew.

But for the people who have been lied to, something more pervasive and disturbing occurs. They castigate themselves about why they didn’t suspect what was going on. The emotions they feel, while seemingly more benign than those of the perpetrator, may in the long run be more corrosive: humiliation, embarrassment, a sense of having been naïve or blind, alienation from those who knew the truth all along and, worst of all, bitterness.

Our societal soft spot for the prodigal son fucking pisses me off.
And bitterness? Well, just the thought of being a bitter old woman makes me, well, bitter. So, kind readers, what follows is a purge.

Want to know how I spent the week before I was told my marriage was over?
Playing gracious (and I might add, sincere) hostess to a group of in-laws, arranging entertainments,  dinners out, excursions, shopping, etc.--because whatever they wanted, I wanted because they were family.

Want to know how I spent the night before I was told my marriage was over? Dinner with friends. Were there three couples? Four couples? Just two? I don't remember, but for once, I was not urged out the door subsequent to his last hastily swallowed bite. We closed the place down. Goodwill and friendship were savored like wine. Lingered over like coffee and dessert. My around-the-next-bend post empty nest future wavered in front of me like a mirage that was just about to materialize. Less than 24-hours later that evening, like the 32 years before it, was wreckage.

I have shelf after shelf of family photo albums. Photographs are a somewhat skewed toward the rosy as a record of reality, but I regard them as proof that I am not delusional. Those pictures, I tell myself, are record of my life as I lived it. Still, if the present could be scrutinized frame by frame, I'd too often find myself looking at happy moments with suspicion. Why that exact inflection? Was that irony? Disapproval in the raised eyebrow? I don't want photos. I want x-rays. Of everyone.

I am fortunate to be a writer. Writing helps me sort through a lot of bullshit. And the page, the screen, the blogosphere are probably better than the bottle for dispersing bitterness. Or maybe it's just smarter to be bitter and sober than it is to be bitter and drunk. So, bitterness, be on your way. Go find the prodigal son. Seduce him. Turn him back. Take him out for drink--a tall drink of you.

What the Hell?

Dream:

I was still in his bed while he stood in his miniscule kitchen making coffee. "The cops have been watching me," he said. I wanted to ask if he wasn't too much of a small-time dealer for that, but I didn't know if it would insult him. "It's not just the pot," he said, as if mind reading was just one more thing he could manage to pull off without even trying.
"What then?" I said.
"Welfare fraud, bad checks, dozens of traffic tickets. And the Feds want me for tax evasion."  He pulled the sheet away from me and gave me the look that told me he thought I was beautiful, then waited for me to sit up and handed me my coffee. 
"Well, you ought to get the hell out of town," I said, plotting my own escape. Damned if I'd go down with his sinking ship. He was full of bullshit about being the captain of his life, not bowing down to the man---well, I was just a deck-swabber, cleaning up little catastrophes here and there, enjoying his pot and his bed. I had no qualms about jumping overboard.

It was later that night when I realized I had nowhere to go. I asked my friend Diane if I could sleep on her couch. One night, she said. The next day I went to look at apartments in a building that had a unit I had seen some months ago and liked. But when I pulled up in front the face of the building was sheared off like a dollhouse.  The apartments looked like empty boxes flimsily stacked on top of one another. It seemed indecent somehow, this wholesale peeking inside. No draperies or rugs or furniture. What the hell is happening here, I wanted to know. 

Later, driving around in my car, the cops called my cellphone. I barely know the man, I said when they asked me about him. Friend of a friend. I was couch surfing. Nothing more. I knew it would be trouble for me later, but I called his cell phone to warn him. "Get the hell out of town," I said. 

"Come with me," he said.

I was already driving up the coast. Betrayal, betrayal, my tires sang as they whirred against  the pavement.