November 12, 2010

"Re-Christening"

There’s something inherently sad about my panini maker. It was a Christmas gift from a friend a few years ago for me and my husband. Since then, he has made delicious grilled eggplant, procciuto and mozzerella toasties, grilled cheese and tomato paninis, and more. It’s a Breville named after its founders, Bill O'Brien and Harry Norville, who mixed their last names together to create a partnership that has lasted since 1932.

Though my husband and I kept our own last names when we married, the panini maker was for us both. The thing is made from stainless steel, built to outlast anything. What makes it so sad—depressing even, is that the partnership under which we received the appliance no longer exists. He is moving out, or is supposed to move out in the next few weeks, and that panini maker is something I want to keep—not because I know how to make anything other than quesadillas, but because it’s only half mine and I want it to be wholly mine.

For months now, I’ve been dealing with our divorce, waiting for it to be final, wondering how it would be when we no longer lived under the same roof. It’s not like my ex and I spent every night together while we were married. Near the end we were even taking separate vacations. But the fact remains I have always lived with him. For the past nine years, our things have shared the same space, even if our bodies were on different continents. And just two days ago, I moved out.

Now, all of a sudden, it’s officially over. We don’t and won’t ever live together again. This finality was lost on me when the divorce papers came—the stamped documents that legally evidenced the break—the money I would have to shell out, how the motorcycle would go with him, how the car would be mine. Like I kept telling him, “we’re living like we’re still married,” and it was true. Our laundry was still being done in combined loads, our runs to Costco were from shared lists, and even though we had different checking accounts, our bills were still being paid from the same pool of money.

The day I left he got into an accident, going over the handlebars of his motorcycle and demolishing his helmet. It reminds me of the time just after his father died when he totaled a brand new Peugot. The day he got home to be with his half-way-around-the- world-mother he rolled it down an embankment and smashed the entire roof except for where his head was. I remember the panic I felt not being there with him, unable to feel at ease until he had spent his three weeks away, and had finally returned to my arms.

This was not the same. That afternoon, two days ago, he calls me first—before he calls the police.
“Are you bleeding?” I ask.
“I don’t know. . . Are you going to be there for me?” he harangues four or five times.
Which prompts me to promise him, “Yes, of course. I will.” But I don’t mean it. When I get off the phone, I call someone else to take care of him. I pack a bag and leave. No note, no phone call, nothing. I simply leave my marriage of seven years, our relationship of ten years. I leave my house, most of my things, and him. But this was not the way I planned it, not the way I wanted it. I had envisioned helping him sort out the serving dishes and glassware, sending him on his way with my good wishes.

Finally this morning, I stop by to grab a few things. I know he’ll be home because he barely leaves the house. It’s been this way for years, and one of the reasons I was unhappy; I couldn’t be his entire social circle. It was too much pressure, too pitiful, and too painful.

The puffy look in his eyes is like he’s just been thrown under a bus. He shows me the strawberry he got when he hit the pavement, and it occurs to me to hug him. But I can’t even gather the strength for that because the truth is I have nothing left for him in my heart. I have given so much, talking myself down from the ledge of leaving him so many times, I’m amazed I held out for so long.

“I would like the panini maker,” I say out of nowhere.
“But you never use it.”
He’s right. I don’t ever use it, but of all the things in the kitchen I want it, and I don’t know why.

When I get to my mom’s house I am completely wrung out. I don’t even have enough energy to ask her about the eye surgery she’s just had, to inquire about how she’s dealing with her doctor’s orders to spend the next two weeks horizontal and on her stomach.

Having volunteered to watch over her I have a valid excuse to be gone, but I should not have divulged this information to my ex. Given his ability to rationalize and his aversion to moving (it’s mid-November and he’s been living with me since the day in May when we broke up), any excuse for my absence might just incite him to stay until the due date.

But I felt sorry for him and I’m weak and I still love him, so I told him about the surgery to soften the blow.
“I’m trying to be gone by the end of the month,” he said, soft. And I hope he saw the look of relief in my eyes, and actually does it this time.

Because I wish to be alone, to deal with this my way, to feel the loss fully, to live in it completely for a little while. I go to the guest room and close the door because there are people everywhere at my mom’s house. My mother, the saint, has friends and family constantly hovering around her, filling up her water glass, making sure she takes her medication, fixing her lunch and dinner. And I have dashed all expectation to actually be responsible for her without giving any reason why, though she kind-of knows, like mothers usually know. So for now this guest room is my sanctuary where I am trying to mete out some sense of self.

Here, I contemplate how the bliss and giddiness of the new relationship I’m in has subsequently simmered down to a slow boil. I think my new guy must have a sixth sense. Either that, or he has his own shit to deal with. Maybe it’s a little of both. This solo-ness makes me wonder if it’s fair that I get to be so happy. Should I wallow and mope around, denying myself of male companionship for a more respectable amount of time? Should I send my new guy away until I’m ready to fall in love, or until my ex is ready to move on? Having spent the majority of my life un-brainwashing myself and refusing to swallow Roman Catholic guilt, I think on it for a time, ultimately deciding against martyrdom.

Instead, I ask myself questions about where my center goes when there’s someone else in my life—why I feel compelled to meld into this new person, even though I promised myself to keep my love life separate from my real life—at least until it’s a real relationship. My knee jerk reaction is to sew myself into his pockets, to make him fall in love with me. And I have to remind myself that I’m not ready for a new relationship because my heart is still breaking.

The best way I know how to process all of this is through yoga. Tonight, I break down when we do soaring pose: our stomachs on the ground, just like my mom has to be for the next two weeks. I think about how helpless this pose is—this proneness to someone stepping on me, this limbless-ness. And I decide that it has to do with the faith that a wind will come and scoop me up, cradle me into a brisk wisp of air, and I’ll feel weightless and whole again.

But it’s hard to gather the strength to hope when it’s been dashed so many times. I hoped my ex would snap out of his depression funk, finish his pilot’s license, and get a job. I hoped he would clean up underneath the house, install the stereo wires, stop complaining, and stop procrastinating, but none of that happened. The man I’m divorcing is not the man I married. The man I’m divorcing has lost his father, has decided that God is dead, has stopped believing in himself, and has finally, lost his wife.

But I can’t take on that burden. It’s my brokenness that hurts most right now. Sadness seeps out of me in eagle pose as I wring my muscles, my organs, my skin dripping with sweat, my drishdi on my third eye as I try to learn something from this pain, try to remember that I did everything I could to save my marriage.

Afterward, I sit in easy pose and make the wisdom mudra with my thumb and forefinger in circles on my knees, and in my calmness I search that place where I’m able to look at myself squarely. There, I hear my wise woman voice rise up from deep down and say, “You have time.” And this is the most beautiful moment in my entire day because it reminds me that I don’t need to figure all this out right now, that I can be present to this deep sense of losing someone who used to be my entire world. Hearing this voice gives me the permission I need to bang out this confused manifesto.

And exactly as I’m writing this, the song, “Just Breathe,” comes on Pandora, and I’m sure that’s the answer: that I must feel this sadness—that I must truly let it in so I can let it go. If I don’t, I know it will follow me, clinging to my heels and climbing up my calves, attaching to me, becoming baggage: another backpack. I want to finally be happy. And that happiness, if it’s going to eventually stay, can’t be tied to a new guy.

Yesterday, I was answering questions about said new guy to a girlfriend of mine, whose sister went through a particularly nasty divorce.
“So are you going to burn your wedding photos, now it’s over?”
“No, why would I do that?”
“You know,” she said, “to start over. Clean slate and all.”
I explained I don’t need a clean slate. I don’t need to erase my marriage or the past ten years because that would be doing a disservice to my journey that has ended up right exactly here. I’m not going to pawn my wedding ring or erase his image from my hard drive. And it’s not because I don’t want a clean start, but because some of the memories I have from my marriage are pretty damn good ones. Just because I grew too big to fit into that relationship doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the me I used to be, or wish at all to forget her.

Still the fact remains that this woman who used to be part of a unit is now on her own. There is no more O’Brien and Norville, just like there is no longer him and me. Instead, there is Breville. Instead there is just him. Just me. But whereas on the one hand there transpired an undividable union, on the other hand a severing occurred.

So what happens when we lose the partner we thought would be with forever? When the vow is broken? When we go back on our word? When we give up and stop trying? And why do I get to be an optimist—still believing in love and still thinking I deserve to be happy? I’m crazy, but I’m not that crazy: I know the panini maker won’t make it all better. But there’s something in the thing—how I need to retrieve something of myself: to honor it and love it.

So I insist on keeping the thing, even if I have to scratch out the “Bre” or “ville”—even if I have to etch my own name in caps across it—because although I’m not married anymore, where I came from got me to where I am now, and I’m on the cusp of growing into who I’m going to be. As soon as I can stop this seeping. As soon as my heart stops breaking. As soon as I can feel all the pain I’m supposed to feel, I’m going to make something really delicious with the thing. Something that’s never been made on it—something totally mine, totally fine, totally sublime.