But You Seemed So Happy: A Marriage, in Pieces and Bits

by Kimberly Harrington

Divorce is an opportunity for people to wonder if you couldn’t have done a better job not just with your marriage but with your entire life.

With parenting they say the days are long but the years are short. But now the days are years and time is meaningless.

But when a marriage is over, we don’t ramp back down. We expect a marriage to end, a divorce to be final, and the relationship to be pushed off a cliff.

Could I examine my own role in the unraveling of our marriage without defensiveness or anger (ha ha, probably not!)?

Mostly, we were lazy. Do you know what’s easier and cheaper than packing all your shit and moving to another house? Not doing that.

Anyone who has ever dared to share an unconventional idea knows people love to shit all over it.

Expectations—in marriage, in life, about what we are owed, about what we can control—have always been the problem.

I have come to this understanding: None of us will ever truly know the people we think we know so well.

It’s never too early to believe you deserve the world’s attention simply for being you.

I never doubted I was loved. I still don’t. I know I am loved. But I’m not sure I ever felt particularly cared for, especially when caring for me felt challenging and when it would’ve mattered most. There is a difference.

This is the kind of circle jerk argument full of deep-cut cultural references you can expect to have for the rest of your miserable life.

Yours will be a largely feral existence dotted with occasional check-ins for Little Debbie snack cakes, dinner made from soup mix, and a bath once a fortnight.

You will probably see Grease when it comes out and, well, you have to. That’s your one chance. You will be rewarded mightily by Grease, which will feature filthy lyrics like “the chicks’ll cream” that you won’t understand at all. It will also deliver the most powerful lessons of your Gen X girl life—if you want to get a guy, you’ll need to change absolutely everything about yourself, start smoking, and dress like a whore.

Are you smoking yet? What are you waiting for? An engraved invitation, which is still a thing that exists?

Yours is the last generation that couldn’t wait to get the hell away from your parents and do whatever you wanted as if you hadn’t been doing that all along.

If you don’t know how someone can just “fall into” working in a porn shop, then either you’ve never lived in a rural town or you were ambitious. Or you had parents who asked questions like, “Where are you working these days?”

I don’t think I felt like my sexuality was a part of me then, something that belonged to me and that I could shape however I pleased. It felt like it had to be activated, like an ingredient in someone else’s recipe.

That’s not to say our first date progressed in a way that led me to believe we had a future. It was awash in red flags, but red flags are like passages in the Bible: you can pluck them out of context and bend them to suit the story you wish to tell.

So profound was my singleness at the time that I slept in a twin bed. Twin beds are for children and prisoners.

Apparently it was an option to not play games. Apparently it was possible to just be on the same side. Apparently you could fall in love, just like that.

I remember the way to my heart was paved with flowers stolen from weddings, hotel lobbies, and our neighbor’s hydrangea bushes.

I had never felt adored by a man, not like this. I thought I would always have to trick one of them into liking me or at least give them enough to drink until they thought they might.

Why are you in a marsh? On a footbridge? Sitting in a lifeguard chair? Naked in a tub together? In a snowstorm holding a hand-lettered sign featuring a pun about your future joint last name? Swinging on swings together or on a carousel or eating cotton candy? Again, are you children? Must you make that heart shape with your hands?

Hold on just a minute. Why are you juggling? Do you know how to juggle? Are you fake juggling? Do I need to insert a monocle emoji here?

Why are you standing out in the middle of a field? You know that doesn’t mean your marriage will be outstanding in its field, right? Engagements are not dad jokes, sir.

Why are you on the edge of a cliff? Yes, it’s certainly stunning but did you know since 2011, 256 people have died taking precarious selfies and while I know this isn’t technically a selfie it is an opportunity for me to ask you this question—why won’t you demonstrate some fucking common sense for a change? Also: Why a tie? But you’re on a cliff? Is it a formal cliff? A business cliff? A you-never-get-a-second-chance-to-make-a-first-impression cliff?

Is that your natural smile? Are you sure? Or is that what a dog person might call a “submissive smile”?

That day and into the evening I smiled more than I had probably ever smiled in my life, which I hope means something to every man I’ve crossed paths with from the time I was a child who told me how much prettier I would look if I just smiled more.

I wish I had said, I don’t know what to do but I promise not to ignore this. But I ignored it. Because I didn’t understand it and ignoring it was easier. Ignoring it would always be easier.

Did you know from the start it wasn’t what you wanted but you couldn’t come up with a good enough reason to say no?

They told you men were hot and charming but also the enemy and relationships were wars to be relentlessly fought.

I thought watching a sad movie in my head would prepare me for any real sadness that might come. But nothing can prepare you for not hearing a heartbeat when your heart is preparing for everything except that.

But having all the plans in the world doesn’t mean much.

If there is a better feeling than your life working out while you are fully aware it is working out, I’m not sure what that might be, how it could feel any more visceral and full of wonder than this.

Even when we were in the water we knew there were rusted barrels nearby but we still had an absurd belief everything in the country was clean and right when I knew from personal experience it’s often just a beautiful setting for burying things.

When I had a baby, I didn’t understand I had unwittingly kicked open the door to an entirely different life. I didn’t understand it because it doesn’t happen immediately.

I was so used to thinking of my body as the thing that held up my head and I put clothes on and I was perpetually disappointed in.

There they would be, one white and one chestnut, standing with their swish-swish tails, and their twitchy-get-off-me ears, dipping down to pull grass with their teeth, as if they were sipping from a stream.

It is your sole responsibility to navigate this process through a series of informed guesses (“Reading the Room”).

This will forever be known as the Nothing’s Fair, No One Wins, Everyone Loses phase of our organization. We will probably laugh about this someday (“We Will Not”).

It’s about all the hills we maybe should’ve died on but thought it might be easier to just pretend those hills didn’t exist at all.

Somewhere along the way (can’t imagine where except everywhere) I had absorbed the idea that if The Man was happy then The Woman should be, too.

Then we had kids and who the hell is going out dancing when they’ve got babies? Certainly not me, a mother and a suddenly serious person who no longer has time for the simple joys of being alive, thank you very much!

Our phones contain something worse than our secrets, they contain the truth.

I wanted to smash the phone and Facebook and the entire universe into a million grains of sand.

I did not love him any less, but maybe I would never be loved enough by him or anyone.

I felt dizzy. I felt alive. It felt pointless. I remember thinking this moment, utterly mundane from the outside, was magical. Ugh, gross.

was. It was cozy and it was magical and I couldn’t believe I was being forced to think these barfy words but what could I do? They were accurate.

I realized this needed to change, yet even as I was figuring that out, it was still me figuring that out.

Fermenting something less-than-flattering into comedy is a time-honored coping mechanism, because it works.