It’s strange – inexplicable, and sometimes sad – how people respond to a couple’s separation and divorce.
Most people you know come out of the woodwork to support you, or to at least mouth the word “support.” Distant relatives. Long lost friends, usually seen only in fleeting glimpses on Facebook. The woman from your daughter’s camp who you only spoke to in fits and starts during pick-ups and drop-offs last summer. Acquaintances, colleagues, and readers. Sympathetic strangers. They rally when you need them, even if only in a few ephermeral words. Many people you don’t expect to come to your aid. You find out who your friends are.
The other side of this coin, the dark one, is that some people you thought were your friends aren’t, and you find that out, too. And sometimes, it’s people you don’t expect, would never have believed.
***
The truth is, I’m still heartbroken. I may never stop being heartbroken over it.
It’s been a couple of years, and so of course looking back now I can clearly see what I should’ve seen then. But I was drowning at the time, and a drowning person can’t see past their own flailing arms, fighting to keep themselves afloat, fighting for air, for life. That she stopped calling, making any effort, during the time when my life was falling apart around me and I needed her friendship more than I ever had. How could I not see that? In my blindness, I still reached out to her – I so desperately needed her support, love, and understanding that nothing registered that should have. I couldn’t see the trajectory, because I still loved her. I still referred to her – frequently, and to many – as one of my best friends. I feel ashamed, humiliated, thinking of that now.
I saw her for the last time in October of 2009, less than four months after my separation, when I was still mired in deep despair. I’ve spent the two years since looking back on that seemingly normal night, trying to decipher the code of Why, and I still can’t. Over and over again, I’ve gone through the expansive and wide-ranging catalog of my faults, flaws, and shortcomings, trying to make sense of how I could have deserved this. How anyone could have deserved this, really. Did I say something she took the wrong way? Did I anger or hurt her somehow and not realize it? I want to locate a reason, a cause, a root. I want to understand, to make sense of it. But there’s nothing. That night, I sat in her kitchen. We ate pizza and talked. Our daughters, who were best friends at the time, played together. These were people I would know my whole life. I believed that. I trusted her unquestioningly, blindly. I couldn’t see what was coming.
– Silence. Months of attempts at contact. Slow realization. Confusion. Hurt. My daughter, asking again and again to see her best friend. Hurt turning to desperation – please, please just let the girls see each other. Silence. Disbelief. Tears – mine and my daughter’s. Silence. –
Who does this? Who does this – without a word of explanation – to someone they’ve known for so many years, shared so much of their life with, raised their children with? And who does it to someone during the hardest time in their life, when they are at their weakest, most broken, most wounded? Who does this to a child who loves them, who sees them as family? Who does this? Who could be so cruel, so heartless? Who?
In a sort of pathetic last ditch effort, I call her at work – cornering her, for all intents and purposes. I just want to know why. I at least want something to tell my daughter. My daughter, she’d have to agree, deserves that. But she acts as if nothing is wrong, scrambles, lies – oh your emails somehow got transferred into this folder instead of the inbox, so I never saw them! I’m crying, because I’m so absurdly, stupidly happy. Oh thank god, I say. I thought something was wrong. This is how much I want to believe her.
It is, of course, embarrassing to look back and remember this. How naive I was. How eager I was to reconnect. How I didn’t even pause to question why, if what she was saying was true, she hadn’t contacted me herself in all that time. How despite the mounting evidence suggesting she was not to be trusted, I still trusted her.
We make tentative plans to see one another the next week, to get together and catch up. She says she’ll call. A few days later, I get a two-line email from her, putting me off, delaying. Then silence.
In the almost two years since I last saw her I’ve spent hours crying over this, trying to work through the hurt, pain, loss. Hours recounting to friends and loved ones The Story, as if by telling it and retelling it I’ll uncover some hidden key, some Rosetta Stone, that will unlock the meaning of all of it. In the end though, every theory falls short, seems inadequate, except for one. Though you may have loved her, she didn’t love you, and so wasn’t willing to stand by you during a painful, messy, difficult time. You weren’t worth it to her. Whatever else may be true, those words surely are.
So I’ve tried to just move on. There seems to be nothing else I can do, except that.
***
A few weeks ago, I was in the kitchen when the kid bounced in from the other room. “Mom! She wrote back! She wrote back!”
My heart dropped. I instantly knew she was referring to their daughter, who she still exchanged emails with occasionally. The girl’s responses had become fewer, rarer – hence the excitement.
“Oh?” I said in my Official Neutral Voice.
“Yes!” she said excitedly. And then, heartbreakingly, “I’m going to ask her why her parents don’t talk to us anymore.”
I felt my throat tighten, tears threatening to come. But I pulled myself back from the sadness.
I smiled and wrapped my arms around my girl, leaning down to kiss her forehead lightly.
Then I changed the subject.
