The author kindly offered to waive her fee for this piece.
Ideally you should begin this process approximately ten years before you plan to get divorced by meeting the best person you have ever known and marrying them. If you plan to get divorced in less than ten years, don’t worry! Many have accomplished this work on an accelerated schedule.
Give and receive affection, accrue memories and experiences, come through struggles, share joys, have a child. Above all, make sure that at some point, things get really weird and you behave poorly. Resent as often as you are able. Misunderstand and be misunderstood. Try several couples’ therapists. Remember, they do not want to help you. They are on your spouse’s side and just want to change you in ways that feel inauthentic.
Move out then back in. It is a slough of desperate love and battery acid. Strange species live there. Just. . .just suffer and cause suffering. Just suffer and cause suffering. Move out then back in. Move out then back in. Misunderstand and be misunderstood. Just suffer and cause suffering.
There are pools of clear water when you are on the couch together and you are reading; some peace. Reading alongside, you are not a corroded robot slough snake; you are a person and a spouse. (Ok, a wife. Ok. Ok, ok ok ok. You’re Carrie, you’re my ex’s ex before we were exes. You’re me. This is about me though you didn’t hear it from me because I’m not one to gossip. Resume second person indicative/imperative.)
Read. Read read read read read. Read. Dickens is good, those tend to be long and engaging. Zola is good there’s A LOT of Zola that’ll buy you time. Stendhal. Pop science and history. Long old books. IMPORTANT CAVEAT no new fiction or memoir unless you want to remember you’re not a human OR a writer. No poetry it ends too soon and you have to think about it. God, no self-help. As if there were a self to help! As if.
If you are home, you are reading or crying. Read, cry, be somewhere else. Read, cry, be somewhere else. Read, cry, be somewhere else. Read, cry, be somewhere else. Read, cry, while crying ask him your spouse to brunch, that’s a thing, right Ask him your spouse to do a thing that’s a thing. Brunch.
He Your spouse does not want brunch, he your spouse wants a divorce. That’s also a thing. It has that but not much else in common with brunch. You have married someone worth marrying, remember, and there is love and you could try forever but there is a child, remember, and her the child’s own words are coming to her the child and mind is real and he your spouse says she your child should not have to think this is what love needs to look like, trying forever, reading, crying, being somewhere else. He’s Your spouse is right. You married someone worth marrying.
Freak THE FUCK OUT for three days and then be fine. It was coming. The grieving happened. Move in with your folks. They are good folks. They are a big help with childcare. Work. See friends. Get Tinder. See friends on Tinder. Delete Tinder. Get Tinder. Delete Tinder. (Whether or not one gets Tinder a third time is the focus of much cutting edge research and scholarship, but no definitive conclusion has been reached.)
Your therapist is puzzled. Frankly, she has never seen anyone cope with divorce with such perspective and even temper. You are intact amidst chaos.
Hey now, didn’t you like to read? Wouldn’t it be cozily decadent to read a nice chewy novel in your linen pajamas in your beautiful, azure room in while your sweet child sleeps a few feet away? Have you read Persuasion? You can’t remember. Why don’t you start with that.
It is an old hardcover copy. Open the cover, hear the canvas spine stretch and crack.
You are in a slough of desperate love and battery acid. You miss him your spouse terribly.
You miss him like he missed you when you were with him.
You miss the thing you were trying to resurrect—did resurrect?—when you read with him your spouse in the empty times. The thing. Gently abiding? A thing. Some thing.
Close the book. Maybe test it a few more times. Reading. Each time, the slough, the robot snake, the grief. Why bother. There is enough world out there without the world in those. You have real people. You love real people.
Get sick, eventually. It goes to your brain. It’s not supposed to stay there but what does anyone really know about brains? A lot, probably but you don’t know because you don’t read about it.
In any case, your brain does not know anything about brains. You wait baffled at the bottom of down escalators, trying to go up. You need to read a form and the letters barely make words and the words certainly don’t make sentences. You have to turn to the stranger behind you. “Can you read this to me?” You are able to grasp scraps of meaning in the sounds. You can sign this form.
Some time. Less sickness. Bits of brain start to settle where they will, mostly where they were before. Moving in space is still tricky, but you’ve always been clumsy; maybe you just notice it more now. Feelings are ok. Color comes back to your lips and fingertips. Your ex brings your daughter child by for her the child’s days with you. His Your ex’s finger is cut and feeling appropriately friendly and tender you go to get something for it. A band-aid, some ointment. Returning it to the cabinet you idly read instructions on the band-aid box. You idly read. You read. read. read
Tags: advice, carrie hill wilner, divorce, relationships
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Oh man. This is raw and real and so truthful it hurts.
Oh. Hi. I was right there six months ago, sans child, sans reading. Just more crying. And cooking. Cooking. Crying. Why don’t you love me anymore. You know. Things.
Oh dear. Yes. Yes, this and more, and watching something you made be destroyed because he can’t take you not loving him any more, either.
Carrie Hill Wilner! I am so thrilled that you are on the Toast, and I am staggered by how good this piece is.
And then one day you stop feeling amiable. You stop wanting to do things to make it “easier” on your spouse, who didn’t want this divorce but didn’t want to do the work to keep it from being anything but a divorce, either. You stop feeling friendly, amiable, sad, and suddenly it’s just a lot of anger at lots of inappropriate things at inappropriate times and the only time you’re not angry is when you can lose yourself in books.
If you’re me, anyway.
I lift my martini glass to you, sister.
Was it a good martini?
Omg, yes yes yes. Are you me?
This is really, really, really great. Thank you for sharing it.
Dickens absolutely got me through the first six months of my separation. The characters in Bleak House followed me on long trips back and forth to his new house in another state, on the trip to London for my birthday that was supposed to fix our marriage, to the movies and yoga classes (so many yoga classes) I went to to get away from my empty apartment.
You’re right, your spouse doesn’t want brunch. Your spouse also doesn’t want a trip to the farmer’s market or a grueling afternoon of smoking up the house with a complicated recipe for the goat meat you bought. For a long time your spouse doesn’t even want a divorce, until finally one day your spouse does.
Yes, so much of this was me two years ago. Just mix in running at 4 a.m. when you finally acknowledge you won’t be sleeping any more along with the reading and the way you can burn and feel cold at the same time and you have it.
This is so beautiful and hard and true.
Sitting in your car in the driveway, not wanting to go inside for the first time, remembering when you couldn’t wait to get home.
Oh maaaaan, that was one of the first gut punches for me. When I suddenly realized I was hoping against hope that my best best best friend in the whole world wasn’t at home when I got there.
Nailed it.
Why do you want me to cry when I’m supposed to be grading terrible essays? To be fair, it’s super easy to make pregnant ladies cry.
Even amicable (of sorts) sounds pretty terrible. ALL THE HUGS!
Hi Carrie! As a lover of your books columns on the hairpin, I am happy to see you writing again! I am sorry to see you’ve been going through some tough stuff, but thrilled to see you are healing. I always wondered where you went. And here you are! Welcome back 🙂
This is just lovely. I love that The Toast posts pieces like this. No pat ending. Just reality.
Oh, this is terrific and so spot-on.
So one time two years ago I was broken up with three months into a lease and I had to spend the remaining nine months living with my long-term SO of six years, now my ex-SO, and it was like this, all the time, but without the child and with more stress-vomiting and panic attacks where I would pace the kitchen floor making this little “eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee” sound out my mouth on every exhale. I could only do this quietly and late at night after he’d gone to bed in his (separate) room, so I would save it up for when I heard him snoring and, now safe from his judgment and derision, pace, pace, pace, back and forth, back and forth, hissing eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee and holding my arms tight to myself. Then when I couldn’t make any noises anymore, I’d go to the bathroom and quietly vomit, or just hover over the toilet and dry-heave for a bit.
Sometimes then I’d go to the SuperTarget and wander around staring at endcaps and endless products, wondering what they do, whose homes they belong in. Things that had pictures of families on them enjoying something were fascinating to me as alien artifacts, things that said “just for you” made me weep inexplicably. My eyes were constantly puffy and red. I spent a disturbing amount of time looking for OTC medication or herbal teas to relieve me of my tendencies to burst into tears at otherwise ordinary stimuli including daylight and slight breezes. These expeditions were always unsuccessful. Waiting baffled at the bottom of down escalators trying to go up, that was me, for those nine months. How do I. I cannot even.
I was EXTRA clumsy around his stuff, which I didn’t move out of my apartment until a friend of mine came to spend a few days and said “uh, it’s been a year, why is his stuff taking up like a quarter of your living space” and I hadn’t even seen it for months, bumped into it without ever seeing it, and my friend, bless her beautiful soul, got some big black Hefty bags and threw it the fuck out.
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