Single Again For The First Time 15: Divorciverssary
Vincent Truman
“I’m going to start doing things for me!” So read my ex-wife’s Twitter post back in early 2012. Considering that our cohabitation, marriage and house were all her initiatives, I always had a bit of trouble with that particular Tweet from ratgurrl. I’m not sure who she thought she was doing things for prior to our separation, but it wasn’t me.
To this day, I cannot think of an instance in which I proclaimed “I want THIS!” and she said, “OK, let’s do it, because it’s important to you.”
The only thing that troubled me more was hearing her voice from many years ago, chastising me for my hesitation about taking the relationship forward. “Get over it,” I can hear her say, “when will you realize that I’m not going to leave you?”
The above two examples, for better or worse (and in sickness and health), sum up the utter dustcloud of confusion and despair which plagued me throughout 2012 as I found myself separated, divorced and ultimately cut out from Jennifer’s life like an ovarian cyst. For most of the year, I didn’t how how to move on or forward, or indeed move at all, without my best friend, confidant, best critic and partner.
This emigration from the Land of the Married to the Land of Just Me took an often violent course and I often felt I was going to disappear under the weight of it. I dated – badly – produced my first ill-received show since 2000, “Venus Envy” (although, to defend myself, most of the fault of the show had more to do with the execution and backstage drama than the script), got in some traveling, gardening, yoga and gradually started forming new memories that did not have to begin with “Jen and I were/are/will…”.
However, as they say, time wounds all heels. In January 2013, I did meet a woman who I was utterly drawn to, without the guilt that had shadowed me because I, as I reminded myself often, committed myself to one woman. I fell in with a good crowd, with whom I explore strange new sights, sounds and sensations. I picked up a script that had laid fallow for months and finished it. And there was some good new sex to be had, a bit beyond my usual boundaries.
I have cried about my marriage precisely three times in 2013 (down from about 300 times in 2012). Once on January 1, 2013, just as the New Year came in: my niece Katherine made that go away by giving me one of the best hugs in my life. The second time was in early March, which marked the one-year anniversary of my ex-wife and I have dinner for the last time. And finally, on May 25, 2013, which marked the anniversary of our divorce becoming filed and final (Jennifer had long since given up wanting to talk to me by May 2012, so she didn’t know the divorce was final until months later – and, at that point, I no longer felt like being her errand boy to update her on the situation. I figured, if she wanted to know, she could ask. She didn’t.)
On May 26, 2013, my friend Melissa and I co-hosted a Divorciverssary (Melissa’s word), celebrating one full year of having our respective divorces finalized. Friends from every decade and avenue of my life turned up and commingled like we had all been family all along. It was a heart-filling occasion for everyone, I think, as all but four in attendance had gone through at least one divorce. Those innocent four smiled the smile of people who had never had their lives completely gutted, and the rest of us admired and loathed them as best we could.
Destination: tomorrow.
