Category Archives: bad stuff from bad times

that could have been a lot worse

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They sat at their favourite table in the happening, beautiful restaurant at Yonge and Summerhill. They laughed, petted each other adoringly and toasted their mutual fabulousness.

Half way through their main course, a woman burst through the front door of the restaurant, pushed angrily passed the snooty maitre d’ and ran screaming toward the couple.

‘You crazy son of a bitch. This is the last time, I tell you. You have done this too many times, do you think I am blind, do you think I am crazy. How could you, you horrible, mean spirited, selfish pig? I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.’ She slammed her fist on the table, the wine spilled flooding the Sole Almandine as she  ran screaming out the door.

At this point, as much as we are shy, unassuming Canadians, there was not a sound in the restaurant as all eyes turned to the couple left behind. They did not flee in embarrassment, did not blush or even blink. In the cruel way that life can find the humiliated and hurt further humiliate and hurt themselves and the nasty and unkind appear unscathed – they looked  at each other and said “Well, that could have been a lot worse”.

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the zoo

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One day on a family outing to a zoo, she glances over his shoulder and sees he is  texting “Hi Beautiful”. How odd, she thinks, we are here together and that is his name for me. The bottom falls out of her stomach as the surreal nonsensical morphs into the  real.  Questions flood her bloodstream, racing through her system, searching for how this could be, poisoning her life immediately and irrevocably.

She tells me later that she waited to confront him  at home,when the children were in their rooms, reading after a long day at the zoo. It is in those waiting moments that I admire her maturity or patience or I am not sure what it was. When she confronts, he denies, looking deep into her eyes with reassurance. This is our human trusting thread- we all share it on some level before we separate. It is our longing to believe and trust, regardless of the evidence shoved in front of our faces, over and over. Often it is  presented only  once , backlit, neon, dramatic and  forensically verifiable and  obvious. We can stare it down, push it back and kill it. We are dying to not lose the  ground that we know. It is shaky, the richter can’t count that high, but we have normalised it. We tell ourselves it is solid.

His words finally gave way to the truth. “I’m done” , he says.  This is what we said impolitely as kids, when we were full. He pushes his marriage away with the same insouciance as a plate after dinner. She begged for a month, they sought counselling, she confronted his lover, had public tea with her no less, and they even made love again. But he was done.

24 short months later after his life with this woman was made public,  they split up. They had moved half way across the country together, bought and renovated a house, started new traditions, took trips together and created a new life. Soon he was done again.

This was a secondary loss for the ex wife- the marriage broke from this relationship and then this relationship broke. Although possibly  just the catalyst for them to split, it feels wasteful in a way that is unbearable. It is barren and empty  and she has to revisit all that is still sore and open.

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the telling

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I had been quiet for well over a month-running from deep conversations, hiding behind emails that could deny emotion and the deep choking feeling that was my sadness. I worked in my basement studio surrounded by children, wise and tender, who asked painful- almost  omniscient  questions, “are you married?”, and “where is your husband?” I lied to these lovely creatures, telling myself that I was protecting them from worrying about their own families. Truth was I could barely get through those early days without crying intervals which I would allow, like sweets after a workout, as a reward for getting through my classes.

My story trickled out with painstakingly slow speed and the silent deafening hum of a leaky basement faucet. This was the first time in my life that I have ever wished for quick and thorough gossip. The telling for me was a very hard part.

For an intensely private person there is no hiding from the eventual telling of your separation. Your status changes overnight. A new box to tick, an empty finger, a new prefix. You have no choice but to be public. But I had needed to wait to be strong enough to share my story with those who did not deserve my tears. It was one thing to cry with your best friend but quite another to sob uncontrollably with the neighbourhood crossing guard.

Sharing the truth of my failed marriage was the presenting of a whole bouquet of dead flowers. All the promise, beauty and innocence in that bridal bouquet was now an eerie, foul smelling assortment of weeds. The flowers are not dead on their own-we forgot to water it, it got sick from us, there was something unbeautiful, unwell about us and we poisoned it. I loathed its sour smell of failure.