Next week I go on my first Airstream adventure. This photo is of the fer-true rig that I’ll be camping in, not just some purely representative image I dug up on the Internet. :)

This is the same Airstream that my (ex) husband and I tried to buy from my brother awhile back, but couldn’t because my brother’s (now ex) wife was laying claim to this trailer as he and she were going through a (well-documented as contentious) divorce. So, my (now ex) husband and I didn’t buy it … Which is just a long-winded way of saying, yes, I’m gloating (just slightly) that I get to go play in this Airstream and my ex does not.

Maybe my marriage would have been saved if we’d been able to purchase this Airstream, and gone gallivanting about in it like we’d schemed. Not be home all last summer while my ex hammered out the concrete patio in our garden and mentally ravaged our marriage (yes, I am still bitter. You think for some reason I wouldn’t be?).

Maybe if we’d been traveling together instead, things now would be different. Maybe. And maybe the unraveling would have only been delayed.

And then he and I would have fought over custody of the Airstream.

We’re probably better off, as-is.

In this month’s theme of “saved” and on the eve of the three-year anniversary of my wedding, I am contemplating that thing I was unable to save—my marriage.

Tomorrow is July 7, 2010. I was married on 07-07-07—ostensibly a favorably auspicious date—to a man with whom I believed my life was destined to be entwined. Our wedding invitation was inscribed with a haiku I had written using the word we thought believed our relationship: inevitable.

my heart and your heart
twining our lives together
inevitable

I really believed my own propaganda. It truly seemed that his desires for his life were on point with my desires for my own life. I thought I had found—not the man who would “complete” me but, the man who would encourage me, support me in my unfolding. And I would do the same for him.

Today, I think I still believe in all that, but my (ex) husband has made it clear that he does not. And I tired of trying to sway him, and I let myself become beat down by his need to un-do us; I lost the heart to try and “save” us.

So here I sit today, ten months since our final split, trying to come up with a new direction for my life. I’m having a damn difficult time sorting through my interests and talents and desires to find which direction I shall turn next. And this may sound pitiful, but I still feel broken-hearted, and that makes it difficult to feel enthused.

For now I will sit seaside and watch the sky and water turn the colors of dusk, while the swallows swoop through the driftwood, harvesting their dinners, and I will work on soothing my heart, rather than planning my life.

This morning I am thinking that so long as I still feel this depth of pain at the demise of my marriage, and so long as I continue to hate on my (ex) husband, there is probably a whole lot left for me to learn from my marriage and its failure.

My (ex) husband was born February 10, 1960, which means that today he is 50 years old.

I am having very mixed feelings about this day. On the one hand, I find myself all mean about it, gloating in the fact that I am not hosting a small dinner party to mark the occasion. The dinner party that I began planning over a year ago. No dinner party for this birthday boy.

On the other hand, I am very, very sad that there is no party for him. More than very sad.

This is the kind of thing that I never anticipated while steeling myself for the divorce.

Odd stuff.

The divorce was finalized just about 48 hours ago, and the grief is rolling in.

I do not know really, why the marriage ended. The man who was my husband (I am not prepared to use the prefix, “ex”) might be flabbergasted to hear me say that–that I don’t know really why he had to divorce me–but I don’t. We didn’t talk about it much.

And what I do know of his reasons, I think they are dumb. Stupid. And why end a marriage over stupid reasons? And that makes me sad.

But I understand that they are his reasons, and he will feel what he will feel; there is nothing I can do about it. And it is this kind of rationalizing “acceptance” that I am relying upon to keep me making one step in front of the last, to keep me moving along.

I am not doing so well at this moment with the making one step and then another. I would really rather go slip into that bath that I have running, and slip under the surface of the water, and remain there. And be done with it.

Probably it disturbs people to hear that. But right now, it is how I feel. So why not say so?

That’ll change, sure. It has already. My feelings are pure roller coaster–swoop up, swoop down, click click click creep up to a height replete with vista, and whoooosh . . . along down to depths. Again. Again.

The violent hate that possessed me scant weeks ago is dissipating. Hallelujah. And I strive to keep a sweet perspective, to frame circumstances and my feelings in a positive way, even to extracting the good messages from my nightmares.

But. I hurt. All up and down my being, from the tip of my big toenail to the end of those wild, silver hairs on my head, I hurt. I am sad.

I wanted my marriage. I wanted my husband. I wanted our lives together. I still do. In spite of my intellectual understanding that it’s not to be.

photo: widdowquinn and used with Creative Commons licensing

There was a comment on my blog recently that I hesitated to let be published–thinking it might disturb my brother. I finally chose to mention it to him, and am now making the comment public. The comment was left on this post where I rant and rail about my husband. I know who left it (the signs are obvious). I will let you make of it what you will.

We feel really bad for you Leila. But, until you work beyond the “hate”, you will never be free. You need to learn to let go. You suceeded [sic] in destroying your brothers [sic] marriage. Perry saw your “true colours” and realized what you really were. Let him go Leila, he did nothing but try to help you while you were together.

In June, 2008, I “retired”, upon my husband’s prompting. This retirement was a culmination of his (and my) desire to spend more time together and do more things together–combined with his assertions since the initial days of our commitment, when he said he would and could provide all the money the two of us needed. Now this wasn’t why I married him, it wasn’t even a substantial factor, but it was a premise that I believed.

In 2009 I had one real goal–to restore my printing press and print Robby’s book of erotic haiku. Seemed a feasible enough goal, and yet here we are launched head-long into 2010 and my press remains languishing in a garage, unusable.

Instead, in 2009, I worked on my husband’s CD, his home and garden, and his company. (I also worked fulltime for six weeks, and stashed all that money in a savings account for us.)

And here I sit today, with a divorce looming in my future.

Does my husband “owe” me anything?

I know that I conducted my life these last three (plus) years as if my husband and I had a mutual future. I know that I would have conducted my life differently if I had known I would be on my own right now.

I would have spent all that time that I gave to his business building up a business of my own. I would have spent all the time and money I invested in his home and garden on something of my own. I would have developed relationships unrelated to him.

Does he owe me anything for that?

Does he owe me anything for having invested my small business experience in teaching him more about his business, in making his business more successful?

Does he owe me anything for having brought my energy into his life, showing him my world, my places, my people?

It is true, we have had only a few years together. It’s not like a forty-year marriage or anything. On the other hand, I don’t have all that many years left–so relatively, a few years is a big chunk of my life. Heck, my mother was only 59 when she died. What if that’s all the more I have? That would mean that I spent one-third of my remaining years in a relationship that has had the plug pulled.

So, what if some majestic court decides that he does owe me? Then what exactly is owed?

Does it matter that I am over here now, living off my dwindling inheritance, trying to be frugal, while he continues a lavish lifestyle–chasing rock concerts, dining out, donning a new wardrobe, making regular salon visits, having frequent ventures to assorted “guru” happenings?

I try not to be touched by any of this. I try not to wallow in pity over the fact that I trusted my husband to be my teammate and found out that he was not. I try not to hate. I try to move on.

But honestly, I do think he owes me. I thought I made his life better; I don’t know that he agrees. I do know that I helped make his life (his business) more prosperous. And I know that I spent the last several years invested in a life that I thought was ours–and his decision to get a divorce means that I must now build a new life for me.

Sure, I can be all cosmic about it–and believe my new life will be even better than the old one–but that doesn’t put food on the table or pay the rent.

Two days ago I learned that within just three weeks of dumping me, my husband was back in the arms of a former lover, a woman with whom he had been serious not long before he and I met. I had known of her and had learned that they had reconnected, but I did not realize to what extent.

With this new knowledge, I stand here and look at myself, at him, at our marriage, and I wonder, wtf.

Over these few months since the break-up I have been doing a lot of thinking and self-examination about “what happened” and looking for explanations for the demise of my marriage and exploring my own role in its decay.

But knowing now that my husband (he is legally still married to me) was so quick to leap back into something that he had assured me many times, and under many circumstances, was not only over, but something he had no interest in . . .

Well I guess it helps in some ways, in that I can release some of the blame that I have placed upon myself for the demise of the marriage. Maybe he was enthralled with her all along. Maybe he just wanted to jump her bones and couldn’t get that out of his mind. And maybe, it was neither of those, maybe he’s just an opportunist who saw an opportunity to rekindle a flame–and if that’s the case, the speed at which he did that indicates to me the small level of commitment he had to our marriage.

Is there a polite “mourning” period that civil people adhere to after ending a marriage? I wasn’t so silly as to expect such a thing from my husband. But, I really never expected him to go back to something he had vehemently told me was not only OVER, but also was really not his cup of tea.

I have to tell you, I feel enormously betrayed. I know, I know: what’s the point? He left the marriage, I should expect he would be moving on. But the particular way in which he has moved on just makes me think that he must have been lying to me all along. And THAT feels worse than him ending the marriage.

I have been struggling with what to write. I find myself in this space where I just do not understand how I got here, and mostly all I can fathom is to blame myself–for not paying attention or something.

I find myself adrift. I find myself without a dream to follow. I find myself with a heart that is quiet and abstaining from giving me guidance.

Actually, my heart is in shambles–so perhaps it IS trying to give me guidance but all that it can emit is garbled whispers through the bruises.

It has been eight weeks ago that my husband revealed that he was done with our marriage.

I didn’t see this coming. (Which would be the part that starts me blaming myself for not paying attention, or something.) I truly was taken by surprise, and for the last two months I have repeatedly wondered, “How did I end up here?”

The “here” being, of course, abruptly without the life I was living–a life with a husband, a home, a mutual future–zip, poof, gone.

Now, I did know the extent to which I had most of my eggs in one basket. My home, my income, even my vision of my purpose–all strongly tied to my husband. And you know, I didn’t have real qualms with that, it seemed destined and correct. I certainly was not fearful of a cataclysmic rearrangement of my life.

But here I am now, riding on the back of a cataclysm–as if I am straddling some rare winged beast, flying without reins.

And all I seem to be sure of right now, is that the only way to hang on is to let go.

My task tonight, explaining the nigh-on unexplainable.

If you’ve been following along at home, you know that on November 7th, my husband of 16 months announced that he didn’t want to be married. I’ve posted here now and again about the “process” of adjusting to his announcement–my sorrow, my bouncing about amid friends’ homes, my anger, my puzzlement.

Whenever I told another friend my news, the response was always, “What the hell?! What?!” For truly, there wasn’t much that made sense about my husband’s decision. And as I pointed out now and again, he and I had spent MUCH more effort on planning our wedding than we spent on rescuing our marriage. There was something about the suddenness of his declaration that made no freaking sense. Not to mention that the declaration itself made no sense. What?!!

Which all makes our current circumstances almost as puzzling.

See, we’re back together.

It’s a long story, of course, but the gist is that my dear husband has done that thing I hoped he would but knew I couldn’t make him do.  He’s looked hard at his true motivations behind his desire to end our marriage–and found they pretty much had nothing to do with me, our marriage, or even, life in the present tense.

(His change of heart is a long story full of much more detail, and I might go into some of that at some later point, but for now just trust me on this one–he’s tackled some sh*t that was fundamentally f*cking up his life.)

So, here’s some of what I take from this (because you know how I like to learn a lesson from this kind of thing).

Through this whole time, even in the midst of my pain and confusion, I stayed true to my values, my needs, my beliefs. I trusted my intuition, I said what I had to say, I held my ground.

When I was attached to the sanctity of our marriage vows, I held forth. When I believed my husband’s reasons to end the marriage were whack, I told him so, and demanded more answers. When I needed support to get through it all, I leaned on my friends and family.

This has been the first time in my life that I’ve held so true to myself, and that I allowed myself such vulnerability with my friends and family. A big change for me.

In time, I found that my head and heart were too battered from trying to restore my marriage, and I stepped up and filed for divorce–if my ship was going to sink, at least I would be captain.

In the end, my steadfast convictions and my commitment to myself and to what I knew to be true, affected my husband and contributed to our reunion (yes, a partial contribution only–the real work was his–but still a real contribution to his shift).

So, my lesson here, is of course that same old one–how we can’t change someone else, we can only be ourselves.

This time, my reward is HUGE, as if the universe agrees that I have really learned these lessons and so gave me back my husband and marriage. Sweet.

(I’d like to give photo credit here, but the image is one my husband tore from a magazine and gave me while we were busy planning our wedding … some automobile ad as I recall.)