Divorce : A Seven Part Story

AshleyLynne
Aug 28, 2017 · 3 min read

Part 1. Setting the Scene.

It was a day like any other. We screamed at one another. I slammed doors. You narrowed your eyes until they were slints and only the light you permitted could get through. (You didn’t want to see me.) I dressed. I went to work. I left with anger. The gravel sprayed from my tires. This was a fight that we would finish in text messages and tears.

I stood at my cash register pantomiming happiness. Common courtesy to strangers. I feigned interest in their purchases. Then the buzzing in my pocket couldn’t be ignored. A text message. “I want a divorce. I want you gone before I get home.”

Part 2. Denial.

My tears have always been against me. The little rebels of salty water pressing against my line of vision, a mutiny as they jump ship. “This isn’t real. This isn’t happening.”

The small trickles became like the holy great flood. No ark was built in preparation. Now I’m drowning in myself and everyone is watching. Now I am telling the story over and over and over and over. Every face that I see is now a captive, confused audience. “I’m moving home. I’m getting divorced. He’s kicking me out.” (Please note that every time I repeated myself I was saying I was going home. You were never home. We never had a home. You were never that safe space.)

Part 3. Anger

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Part 4. Bargaining.

The lack thereof.

I should have been the one fighting for this, perhaps. Maybe I should have been making a plan to be better, do better, make you feel better. But I was standing in the basement with tear stained smock and busy hands. As any substantial relationship will dictate there were things that were yours, mine, and ours. I weeded through the piles, pilfering only what felt like mine.

I wanted only what belong to me. I wanted only what felt like me. I wanted no ghost whisper reminders that you used to belong to me. And I had given myself to you.

Part 5. Depression.

Days were all one day. My dreams were my splintered bones inside my chest. My rib cage had been destroyed as my wild thing heart evacuated. I’m drinking more milk. I’m calcifying a back bone. If I don’t sleep then I don’t have to wake again and face the reality of what’s happening.

I heard your voice in this time frame. An echo of a lover that I used to know on the other side of the phone. “You didn’t have to go. They told you to stay.”

“But you told me to go and that’s all that matters.”

No children. No house. No 5 year 10 year 15 year anniversaries. No slow dances in the kitchen celebrating our achievements. No love letters.

Part 6. Acceptance.

Phoenix. I’ve always been one. My life has seen more fire than a wildfire raging and consuming. I have been swallowed whole. I have been reduced to ashes. (Over and over and over again.) But I am birthed and rebirthed in this. I am born again and again.

I am baptized by fire. My holy sacrifice becomes a testament to the beauty in this brokeness.

I am not yours. I never belonged to you. You took a firefly and captured it in a mason jar. You shook until the light faded. But I cannot be diminished.

Part 7. Epilogue.

This. This is living. I can feel grass beneath bare feet and not fear that you find it too silly. I can’t catch my breath when I look at the stars, but I do it anyway. I drive my car with all of the windows down even though I’m freezing and the music is too loud but I am laughing and I’m crying but I am feeling. I am expanding, my lungs get more air than before. My ribboned tongue has choked on consonants and syllables for too long, those words I couldn’t say.

Divorce is the ultimate act of unknowing yourself as you become somebody else. Or that somebody else becomes that act of finding yourself.

)

AshleyLynne

Written by

Walking contradiction. Choking on consonants and syllables until I pull out my ribboned tongue.

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