Dear Madame,
My wife of 20 years walked out on me.
Well, she didn’t “walk out.” She sat on the edge of the bed, and she patted the open space next to her, and she asked me to sit down, and then she told me how she really felt.
“I don’t love you anymore, Jack.”
There were some other things. Some things about how I didn’t make time for her. Some things about how whatever we had together had died a long time ago, and we were only going through the motions. She said she remembered some moment in the car a few weeks before, when we got in a fight, and she wanted to go in one direction but I told her to go in the other, which was, apparently, the last straw. I think she talked on and on for a while, but mostly I only heard those first awful words.
How can someone fall out of love with you if you didn’t do anything wrong? How can the person you’ve had 4 kids with, who massaged your back on so many occasions with such love, who took you to your colonoscopy appointments and made you a steak dinner for your recent birthday, suddenly say, “Sorry, but it’s over”?
It’s been a few months. I’m in a new apartment. I can’t get my bearings.
I have anxiety all the time. I can’t sleep very well. I don’t know how to start again, what to do so I don’t feel broken inside.
I’ve done well at nearly everything that comes up in my life. I’ve overcome hurdles over and over again. I don’t know if I can get past this one. I don’t think I can.
Please help.
Sincerely,
Jack Boots
Mr. Boots,
I’m sorry you are feeling this pain. It sucks. There’s no way around this feeling it part. And there’s no way around it sucking, either. You may just have to accept that you’re going to feel lots of pain and life is going to suck for a while. Just give yourself permission for this.
You know, I have this problem—and I think we all do—where I think if I play my cards exactly right, if I do all the “right” things, I’ll never have to experience pain or loss. I’ll never have to go through hard times. Do you suffer from this problem, too?
One of the things I’ve learned is that when I’ve stepped up to do what was the right thing, or what I believed was best, or put my neck on the line in some way, or listened to divine guidance, there were still consequences, and me being me—a loving, good and decent person, with all this intelligence and quirky behavior—didn’t save me or protect me from pain and hurt.
Do you know what happened instead, though?
I got stronger. I developed more compassion and depth. I met amazing people, and had amazing experiences, and felt more full of life—both the joy and the difficulties.
Do you think this might be possible for you, too?
Do you think it might be possible that this ending of your marriage, while it hurts, could be a beautiful beginning of understanding more of who you are, what you want, and how to live in this world in a way that is intensely more fulfilling, even if it defies convention?
You might even become more likable. Grateful, too. A better person, over all.
I sure hope.
Here is another thing I want to tell you, this memory that visited me recently, this experience I had that rests in my soul and changed and transformed me when there was no other witness but me and myself, which I think can be the best medicine for a while.
I was driving to Flagstaff, Arizona. I was leaving the Grand Canyon. I had been separated from my husband nearly a year, seeing my kids only half the time, after devoting myself to being a stay-at-home mother with the yoga pants and the Uggs and the volunteering at the Quaker school in the mornings and the blah blah blah.
And all of that was over. I was starting some cubicle job. I was preparing to move out of the house I dearly loved and into an apartment, which I hadn’t found yet, and which I was worried I wouldn’t be able to afford. I had just broken up with a boyfriend I loved because regardless of how much I adored him, he made life harder rather than easier. I needed time alone, to figure out who I was. I had a cat, too, and I’d just gotten her claws out, because I didn’t want her scratching at my toddler’s face anymore. It was a rough February.
But I got $700 dollars in the mail for something—I can’t remember what—and I bought a plane ticket to Arizona so I could see the Grand Canyon, which I’d wanted to see for years. And I bought hiking shoes, which I’d never had before, because I’d never hiked. (I was more the sit-on-the-deck-and-drink-a-margarita kind of woman.)
Once I got to Arizona, and tried to rent a car in Phoenix for my drive, the guy behind the counter showed me I could upgrade to a convertible for just a little bit more money, because it was March, and I guess there were some extra convertibles in the lot. I did that, and the one I got was cherry red, and damn, that was fun.
So I walked the Grand Canyon for a couple of days, and I had all these heart-filled experiences with the rocks, talking to Mother Nature and stuff, feeling the earth vibrate in my hands.
And yet what I remember most, Jack, was leaving the Canyon Sunday morning and driving to Flagstaff on this long open road, where no other cars passed. I wore my hat and my fleece and had the convertible’s top down, the heat blasting, and I listened to The Head & the Heart, and I listened to Florence & the Machine, and I saw this mountain ahead of me in Flagstaff with snow on its cap, beckoning.
I want you to picture it, Jack. I was in this sage green fleece, these fuzzy white gloves, a green knit cap I’d gotten at a little park store outside the canyon. The woman on the stereo, Florence, sang, “Never let me go.”
And it’s over, and I’m going under. But I’m not giving up…I’m just giving in….
And there was that mountain, so tall. So whimsical.
I think you should try it.
Love and hugs,
Madame Rose
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