The End of August

I reached up to put away my Aerobed after a wedding weekend full of bonding with women I love and as I stretched on my toes to put the mattress on the top shelf of one of the four closets in my studio apartment, four Fridley High School yearbooks came crashing at my face, nearly gouging my eye out with pointy corners. Luckily I deflected the fast-advancing yearbooks, but there was a lesson in the occurrence. Sometimes your past not only catches up with you, but it is plain gunning for your vulnerable spots, sharp angles and all.

 

This weekend, after a few months of joy in singledom, a genuine excitement over my independent life, giggling, even, as I walked my dog alone past couples and families, the past seemed to be gunning for me, taking aim as I walked in front of one of my dearest friends as she stepped up to an altar to say “I do”. And it seemed bent on shattering my newly celebrated independence. 

 

I smiled for my friend during the ceremony because I honestly believe she and her man are made for each other, but as I listened to the readings- Corinthians, Ephesians—and heard the rhetoric about love being kind, and patient, and how through loving and helping your spouse you find real joy, I couldn’t help but think “Bullshit!”

 

It was really a low moment. The soundtrack playing was the Beach Boys singing “Wouldn’t it be nice” and all I was thinking of was the soundtrack to the Wedding Singer where Adam Sandler belts out a nice edition of “Love Stinks!”

 

And that, I realize, is what I am mourning two years into the end of my marriage. That blissful Beach Boys optimism. That belief in a kind love.

 

As I heard tales of the ex, his new life, new girl, from my old friends, I plunged from my single-gal high to a broken-hearted low.

 

“But that was two years ago,” said my dear friend as she listened to me lament the losses in my life. “Look at all the good things you have going on.”

 

“It was yesterday!” I said to her—and now, I realize I wasn’t talking about the lanky, basketball-playing man I married so much as I was talking about me. I was mourning me. I was mourning the loss of that girl who believed in an easy love, a romantic-movie love, an infatuation lasting forever.

 

I wouldn’t trade spots with the romantic girl I was in my 20’s, but I miss her. I miss feeling nothing but confidence and happiness at weddings. I miss thinking chance meetings might lead to real love.

 

I know the woman I am now is more cynical about relationships. I know she flinches when a man seems too excited, too eager in a relationship. I know even when nice men, really good guys, take her on nice dates and do nice things, like placing sunflowers where she will see them and smile, part of her cringes. There is fear, disbelief, in this woman.

 

“You’re like a girl I could marry,” said the lanky ball-player to the blond girl on their second date.

“This will be a long relationship,” the girl said to herself. “Just let yourself like him.”

 

The woman remembers this heady love, this twilight romance, this mutual desire for affection. And she knows it was ultimately, deceptively, false: empty. And so this woman is skeptical of good things, of fast infatuation.

 

I put the yearbooks back on my shelf without pausing to look at them, but I can’t help but think about how the past still affects me. Sometimes I am frustrated by the fact that I can’t make myself get over my loss, that I still feel sad at weddings, but then again, as I told my mom tonight on the phone, “I think it’s good I felt that way- I think if I didn’t feel upset that would be strange, like I was an alien or a robot, and I would rather be a human.”

 

People who love me sometimes want me to be over my loss. People who date me sometimes question my grief. But I am ok with how I am feeling. I think the sane response for me, after going through the biggest personal tragedy of my life, is to feel a little sad and cynical at weddings, and to be just a bit distrustful of things that seem too good to be true.

 

I lost myself in my marriage and found myself in the divorce, but change is never easy. Change is brave. Change is painful. Even when it is positive. And so I think it is ok that I am still, sometimes, sad.

 

And I also think it is ok that I am, often, joyful.

 

Suddenly I am feeling lucky again. I am back to rejoicing in my independence, in the freedom to accept my own feelings even though others want me to be over the sadness.  The yearbooks are put away and I’ve got my past put back in a comfortable position. Time to return to joy.