In which we turn and face the strange / ch-ch-changes.

Two years ago today, I was married and living in rural Iowa doing the American Dream thing, with the mortgage and the house under reconstruction and the quiet desperation and all that shit. The Ex was working in Cedar Rapids that week and I was very carefully not blogging about what a fucking relief it was to have him out of the house so I could have a break from the daily battle of either providing sex I didn’t want to provide or enduring a nasty fight instead. He’d been being a good husband for months by that point but I couldn’t bring myself to care. He’d waited too long, made me wait too long, and I found I just couldn’t thaw over a clean kitchen counter or a load of folded laundry… not after having literally begged for six years for just such small kindnesses.

I felt like a royal bitch but I was too fractured to stop being one. I was drinking a great deal, and working a part-time job when I wasn’t cleaning fucking house. I was miserable and rotting and totally ignoring it because I couldn’t figure out how to escape the double albatross of marriage license and mortgage. I had panic attacks all the time and I censored damn near everything I said because the vast majority of it was so terribly cruel it couldn’t be uttered. I felt frozen. If you’d asked, I’d have told you I was happy. I spent hours daydreaming about being single: not about handsome lovers or travel or riches, but about being alone in a small, clean space I had total dominion over.

One year ago today, I was separated. I was living in AmmZon’s house and starting a part-time job. I was drinking a lot and sleeping a lot and partying a lot, but I was beginning to feel more like me than I had in years. It was a transformative phase, and I remember finding incredible joy in simply not being nagged, not having to check in with anyone, not having to do anything I didn’t damn well want to do. I felt like I was decompressing, like I’d been chained at the bottom of the sea and had finally gotten free.

Today, I’m living thousands of miles away from all that. My whole life is different. These days, instead of being a wife on 27 acres with literally tons of belongings I’m a 39-year-old woman who owns no towels or flatware, no furniture or linens. [I own less right now than I did twenty years ago. If we count success by accumulation, I’m a miserable failure: I don’t even have a bicycle, let alone a car.] I’m just starting to make friends here, but for the most part I’m lonely. I live with my grandmother and work a full-time job that offers no room for growth that I’m incredibly grateful to have at all. I spend an awful lot of time alone inside my own head, thinking about ageing and what I thought I’d be doing the year I turn 40 and realizing I never had a plan: when I was younger I wanted to get married and play house but I don’t think I’d ever really visualized myself actually being that person…

Before marriage I was always looking for The One, but ever since my separation the mere idea of starting a romantic entanglement sends me into freakin’ orbit: I want nothing to do with anyone else’s desires or needs WHATSOEVER. I’m craving friendship and companionship, yes, but I’d probably gnaw my own arm off before I’d consider seeing anyone romantically. I’ve realized that when you’re in a relationship you’ve tacitly agreed to give a shit about another person and that you’re obligated to try, no matter how tired or needy you are yourself, pretty much whenever they ask you to. And I do not find the perqs of a relationship to be worth that cost. I’d rather be alone, quite frankly. It’s too expensive, to be always willing to try, to be always willing to give, to be always willing to put another first just for some dubiously good companionship and a little more money than you ever have when you’re alone.

I think I’ve finally become disabused of the notion of romantic love. Not because I’m a scrooge, but because I don’t think any such thing exists: a successful relationship is probably built of enjoyment and tolerance and understanding and honesty, and all of those things as far as I can tell are diametrically opposite of ‘romance,’ which seems to require in order to function a certain amount of misunderstanding and objectification. What I mean to say is that if you know someone well enough to actually be with them, you can’t possibly have ‘romantic’ feelings about them because by then you know they fart and you can’t possibly ever crave them in that romantic love sort of way.

The whole concept of romance has done hearts and culture more damage than fast food, I swear. Meh.

In other news, today is goblinbox’s seventh birthday! Happy birthday, goblinbox.com!