Almost exactly two years ago, I wrote the following essay. It’s more of a screed, or a confession, an examination of where my life was two years after my divorce. Some of it is self-indulgent, defensive, but I have chosen not to edit it because it was who I was at the time of the writing.
In part ii, things have changed considerably (and I’ll post that tomorrow). As the United States celebrates its 229th anniversary of its divorce from Britain, I wonder what it would write? I fear it would be more than self-indulgent; it would be dangerously delusional and arrogant. Experience has changed me; I’d like to think it’s made me wiser, more open, more willing to engage others on their terms and not impose my own. Will I live to see a more mature nation on one of its upcoming birthdays?
My Own Worst Nightmare
I am a few days past my 40th birthday, out of work, a writer who can’t seem to get published recently, a mother who doesn’t have custody of her children, a woman who frequently does not eat meals because she is completely out of money. May I mention my two advanced college degrees? May I mention my feminist faith in self-sufficiency? May I mention how difficult it is to maintain my dignity, let alone faith, in the face of failure?
My daughters live with their father. I know that you will ask why. People always do. If they were living with me, the question of why I had custody and he did not would never arise. But their father having them implies something, and so it’s a question I get asked a lot. The answer is complicated, but here’s the gist: When I left their father I knew I was setting out on a hardscrabble path that would introduce chaos into their lives. Their father has a good-paying job and no intention of leaving the small town in upstate New York where we reside. I knew that the one thing they needed during the upheaval was whatever stability I could give them.
My girls know that I love them. I have never said a bad word against their father in front of them. I want them to know that divorce is not the worst thing that can happen to you. I tell myself that the fights they witnessed between their father and me, the long silences, the glares, the angry rebukes, that witnessing a bad marriage was more damaging than watching us learn to live our lives apart. I have asked myself more times than I can count whether they would agree with me. But I keep in mind that I am the grownup.
My timing for leaving could have used some work. I was unemployed at the time, as I had taken time off to write a novel. I have many job skills and good credentials. And to that point, I had never had a problem finding a job. So, when I left my husband, I figured that I would quickly step into a position. But I left him in August of 2001: September 11 had a major impact on the publishing field. I have sent out enough resumes that I owe the forest ten trees. In the meantime, I scrape by with freelance writing and editing assignments I pick up.
I went hungry for several days a couple of months back. I had enough money to feed the girls during the three days a week they stay with me, but none for myself. So I didn’t eat. I admit it: I was panic-stricken over my hunger, but I took a certain perverse pleasure in the idea that I was sacrificing myself on behalf of my children. It’s what we’re taught, right? That mothers will allow themselves to be killed in defense of their kids. And it’s true: there’s no doubt that I would become Athena in full-battle regalia should we find ourselves in a life-or-death situation. But this was not it. This was me finding a way to punish myself for my choices. I decided that it was okay for me to go to the soup kitchen to eat. I had told myself that I didn’t have the right to eat at the soup kitchen because I wasn’t poor enough, that I would be taking food from the mouth of someone who needed it more than I did. But there’s something about lying awake at night, starving, that led me to the realization that I was poor. And yes, I know the famous distinction between broke and poor-but I’ve been broke for two years now, which I think has put me in a “poor” state of mind.
Going to stand in line to be fed wasn’t a matter of swallowing my pride. Pride, it seems to me, is more of a hindrance than an aid. Pride tells you that you can’t do something because it will make you look bad in others’ eyes. I have seen “pride” destroy people I love, watched them choose to fail because they were too afraid to ask for help. But I’ve realized that it’s more than fear that’s at work. Suffering is its own reward for some people. But not for me.
I am in the process of learning to love myself. It was something that I could not do within the confines of my marriage. What has been difficult for me to separate out is the idea that the poverty under which I currently labor is the punishment for striking out on my own, the penalty I pay for wanting to put myself first. I have trouble writing that line without immediately qualifying it-of course I put my children first, but as the mother of two girls, I found myself increasingly tormented by the idea that I was teaching them that a woman’s life is not about herself. It’s about her children, her husband, her career. Never her. And so, paradoxically, I removed myself from a situation that ultimately I felt would hurt them, even if it was possible that keeping the family intact was a temporarily good thing. The Scylla and Charibdes. How does one negotiate that narrow space between them?
I have bad days where I beat myself down, convinced that I’m nothing but a selfish woman looking for any rationalization to explain away her bad behavior. When I’m feeling especially cynical, I comfort myself with the thought that it’s all winter: life really is a bitch, and then you get to die. But resorting to such banalities is my way of sloughing off the stuff that matters-if I accept that life sucks and that it never gets better, then I can’t allow that little drop of hope to seep through the crack. And the painful thing about finding one’s voice, the thing that no one ever tells you, is that in order to love yourself in the ways that are real, you have to allow yourself to be vulnerable, to tear down the dyke and swim in the ensuing flood. Choosing to leave has made me vulnerable to tidal waves of troubles, and yet, each time I get knocked off my feet, I find out that I can swim.
I’ve had to rethink my vision of myself as Athena, too. The goddess of wisdom is represented in Greek myth as heavily armed and protected by the Aegis, her impenetrable breastplate. The armor of my intellect was supposed to save me-or at least get me a job. It has turned out that my intellect has been mostly useless in dealing with the brute matter of life. Sometimes, the proper response is to sit and cry, not sit and think your way out of it. And sometimes, the proper response is to laugh uproariously because it’s all so bloody absurd. It’s significant, I think, that Athena was never a mother. I see my willingness to be vulnerable with myself as something that has been gleaned from my years of raising children. In responding to the instinct to protect them, I’m learning that baring my breast, rather than girding my loins, is what life calls for.
Cross-posted at CultureKitchen
