However brutal and heart-wrenching divorce is, there is a piece of it that is an essentially hopeful act. I can't speak for all cases, but in my own, when I said no to years of constant neglect, betrayal, and lying, I was also saying yes to a future in which I envisioned something more. I was not only saying no to mistreatment, I was saying yes to the idea that real love might exist out there somewhere, and that I deserved to find it.
I used to wonder why divorced women got these hardened faces and hardened attitudes. I'm starting to learn. They get them from interaction with men. You walk away from divorce wounded, soft, vulnerable, and yet hopeful. And day by day, hope dies. Vulnerability is covered up by walls to guard your heart. Softness is covered by a hard shell because softness (i.e., weakness) is a siren song to the wolves. Your wounds heal, but they form scars. I think if my heart were put under an x-ray machine, it would look like those x-rays of recurrently abused children and battered wives...little white fault lines of repeated injuries that have never really healed.
Don't get me wrong...I've been one of the guys for more years than I'd even like to think about. My best friend, for the last 21 years, has been a guy. No one knows me better or understands more about me than he does. And, I've worked in a predominantly male field for the better part of my life, spending most of my days in the company of men.
So, I know how those guys talked about their idealized woman....she cooked...she was warm, maternal and yet sexy...she was passionate about life...she loved her kids and was a good mom...she was a person of substance...she was intelligent...she was kind...she had her own interests and didn't rely on them to fill every nook and cranny in her life...she was independent...she had common sense. And, she didn't sleep with every tom, dick, and harry. She was holding out for the right guy.
I know this stuff...I've heard it from the insider's perspective.
So, fast forward to my life, now, as a single woman. I can't even say how many guys have bitched and moaned about how bad women are...how they betray them, use them, want them for a paycheck. And here I am...I am all those things that my male friends have always said that they wanted, and in fact, THEY HAVE TOLD ME THAT I AM. Even my ex-husband said the same...that I was a great wife. But of course, that wasn't enough to keep him from following his d**k.
I know now why single women get bitter...it's because every guy we meet, in spite of telling us that they want to meet the ideal woman, really seems to be looking only for the cheap and easy score. And, even when I bluntly and repeatedly articulate to them that I'm not that person, when it comes down to it, their interest in me always seems to come to one thing...sex. I swear, I just don't even want to date anymore.
I wish that men knew that that every time they tell me, through words or deeds, that they just want to get laid, and somehow think I am that person...someone with so little self-respect or value that I will sleep with anyone, or some succession of men, without even knowing who they are, that I feel like they have cut off a piece of my soul.
All of this probably makes me sound like a frigid bitch, when in reality it would be difficult to find a more passionate woman than I am...with the right guy...with someone I love. Sex is inextricably entertwined, for me, with love. I cannot have sex without feeling something, and love is the key ingredient that leads to desire, for me.
So what happened to us, in this culture, that sex has been stripped away from all the metaphysical aspects of it that elevate it from merely a grunting physical act to something almost spiritual? I am not a religious person, but sex with a person you love is so much more than sex. It is poetry and music and dream. It lifts you outside your temporal self and twines your soul around someone else's.
All I know is that I can see myself building these walls of self-protection around my soul where I simply don't care anymore and am not willing to be soft, to risk, to let anyone in just to find out that he's just another prick with one thing, and one thing only, on his mind. I see myself transitioning from a soft, hopeful, vulnerable person to someone who simply doesn't care if she ever dates again or even falls in love.
That soft person is still in there, wanting to give, wanting to love, but increasingly, she hibernates inside a person who just isn't vulnerable anymore.
I suppose this is a necessary change, but it is not a welcome one.
Thank god for my kids. If it weren't for them, I could see myself losing all capacity to love or care.
This morning, driving my son to school, I was overwhelmed by sadness. I reached back and he put his soft little hand in mine and said, "I love you mama." And I thought...for now, at least, this is the only man I need in my life.
And yet...that hope is still there.
a prayer, for all single women, everywhere:
I will not live an unlived life
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible,
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance;
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom
and that which came to me as blossom
goes on as fruit.
"fully alive" - Dawna Markova
I want that openness...i want that hopefulness. So tell me how I hold on to that in the face of the reality which is now my life? I don't know.
I just don't know.
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