Saturday Beach Report: Love and Peace

And if that fails, sail away.

Dinner with Mr. Ex

I'm dining with Mr. Ex tonight.  I want to come to an agreement on my spousal support without going to trial and I'm hoping this face-to-face meeting will do it. We've batted my proposal back and forth a couple of times and I think we might be ready to agree. It's almost two years since he left me. He and his new wife are having a baby in the fall. I think it's time for the crawl out of divorce limbo--time for each of us to concentrate on ascending to our own separate versions of some new paradise.  I'm ready.

It's surprising how little pain is left. Now I just shake my head and ask myself why I wouldn't give up on a man who didn't want to be with me. I should have given up. But I guess we were both courageous in our separate ways. Him for pulling the plug and me for insisting that things might turn around tomorrow or next week or next year.

I don't want to be negative in any way tonight.  I don't want to utter a single syllable of sarcasm. I hope that no vein of sadness or anger opens up and spills forth tears or venom. I'm trying not to have a plan, to not rehearse what I want to say.  I want to stay open, moment by moment listening and thinking and responding.  As the day counts down, I'm visualizing a door flung open, upturned palms, a rose showing its insides.

Seeking Peace and a Cast Iron Stomach

There was a time when I could eat anything. Nowadays, when I think of eating, I ponder idiomatic phrases like "eat my words," "eat your heart out," and slogans like "eat the rich" while I wonder about all the things I should or shouldn't be trying to communicate to Mr. Ex as we endeavor to settle our financial affairs. I have no reason to really trust this man, but I want to enter into an agreement with him that will finally be the end of us.  And I am seeing it as the end. The idea of being chained to him forever has left me. We are sooo close to sealing a deal and if that happens, I can almost imagine shaking his hand at our daughters' weddings and graduations without traveling backward through all the grief of the past two years. That handshake will just be a moment in a day on a green lawn striped with folding chairs or in a rustic field by an ocean and far more momentous things will be happening than ex-spouses touching hands.  He will have a new baby by then.  I'll have my MFA, a new life with a new love and maybe he'll even be at my side.

Still, my stomach hurts.  Maybe that's the way bitterness leaves the body.  Not through skin or lips, but through our intestines.  Sitting for a bit and stewing and then snaking its way out. Purging us of life's poison and leaving behind peace.