2 posts tagged “divorce”

Patricia Telling it Like it like it Is

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Last week, when I wrote about “Some Things I Wish I Knew When I Was Eighteen,” I got some comments on ‘Number Three’ specifically. So I decided to write more about it this week. Because I learned ‘Number Three’ in a most painful way.

For many years I had what I believed was a very close friend. We’d become friends because we shared some surface commonalities. Similar professions, backgrounds, comparable issues with our parents and the big one - “difficult” spouses. As young women will, the longer we knew each other, the more we confided our anguish over our ‘common ground’ situations. We commiserated over how we both wanted our careers to advance more quickly, about how we both wished our parents would stop criticising and let us lead our own lives and about how we wondered if every woman’s husband was such a trial as ours were. It wasn’t that we were ‘whiners,’ stuck in inertia, it was that, being young, we had a lot to learn about how to handle life’s thorny situations. And as we were learning, it was so wonderful to have someone who could identity with it all, someone from whom we could receive sympathy, support and encouragement.

We did that for each other, but I always thought that she did that more for me than I did for her, because I was the one of the two of us, who was having the most trouble, you see. While her career wasn’t exactly where she wanted, mine was just as far a ways as it could get. While her parents were domineering and judgmental, mine were positively cruel. And while her husband was sometimes a pain in the a**, I felt like mine was a vampire bleeding me dry. And that was why I was so very thankful to have her in my life. I looked up to her. I aspired to be more like her. She was smarter, slimmer, able to handle herself better and going places faster. She seemed so much more together than I, that I couldn’t believe she’d even want to have a wimp like me as her friend.

That was why, when she let me down on occasion, little things, like not coming to a birthday party because we were having it at a place that was “too far to drive,” or cancelling an hour before she was supposed to come to a dinner I’d prepared and a myriad of other small, insignificant things, I hardly noticed. They didn’t seem important, because she was ‘there for me.’ She’d listen and she’d console me whenever I needed to talk about my absolutely sh**ty life and my career that was going nowhere.

And that’s the irony of this story. Because by her doing nothing more than listening, slowly…somehow…I began to crawl my way out of the ‘barrel of crabs’ that was my miserable existence. Maybe it was her support alone, or maybe it was something brave inside of me that I never knew I possessed, that eventually helped me resign myself to the sad fact that I was going to have to love my parents from a distance - a very far distance - if I wanted to maintain my sanity. And maybe it was her friendship, or the fact that I was too weak and dizzy to donate any more blood to my insatiable husband, that made me summon up the courage to dump him. Whichever, neither of these things happened overnight, anyway. They took years and my friend was there through all of them.

It was when things got even better for me than that, that she stopped being there. Well, she’d still listen. But now, there were no words of encouragement in her replies. When I joyfully told her I was getting in shape- finally- she said, “I don’t think you should lose any more weight. You’re too skinny.” (Look at my photo. That’s me as I am now, the “skinniest” I’ve ever been in my life. Do I look like I’m starving? Hardly.)

And when I rang to share with her the happy news that my new lover, (a man who has a very strong blood supply of his own and never steals any of mine,) bought me a pair of earrings that I’d coveted forever, my ‘best friend’s’ remark was, “Well, he didn’t have much of a choice, did he? You practically asked him for those.”

That comment didn’t only crush me, it scared me. I knew something was happening, something bad in our friendship and I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. I only knew that she’d been a part of my life for so long, that I couldn’t imagine her not being in it.

This shift in our relationship placed a pall over everything positive that was happening in my life. In my head, I sifted through conversations we’d had in the past. And as I did, I slowly put it together. I recalled remarks she’d made about other friends of hers, too and they began to take on a new meaning:

“_____’s house is always so well decorated. But of course it would be - who’s got the money she has?”

“_____’s husband is always bragging about her artistic talents. He’s just showing off.”

And her most telling commentary of all, “ Wow. _______’s marriage is really a mess. At least my relationship isn’t that bad.”

“At least.” It was a assessment. I finally got it. My ‘best friend’ didn’t really have friends. She had ‘gauges.’ As long as the women she surrounded herself by, could be seen in her eyes as less ‘something’ than she was - less successful, thin, happy, etc., - she could comfort herself that her life, which I see now was a very unhappy one, too, was not as bad as theirs. For reasons of her own that I’ll now never know, she felt that since she couldn’t change her life, at least she had the knowledge, as her consolation prize, that ours were far crappier than hers.

And when I’d inadvertently shown her that it could be done, that we could make our situations better, she no longer had anywhere to hide. From her perspective, our friendship had to end. And it did, badly. It’ll always leave a hole in my heart, too.

But, wait. Before you start thinking, “Wow, what a total b***h she was,” let me add this: it was just as much my fault our friendship ended as it was hers. After all, hadn’t I done the same thing to her as she’d done to me? I’d been comparing her to me, too. I’d put her on a pedestal on which she’d never belonged and I never saw that she had her own weaknesses, doubts and insecurities, that in fact, were more life-lasting than mine. If I hadn’t been so hurt by her not being the woman and friend I’d assigned her to be and had stuck with her, perhaps even confronted her with why she was treating me as she was, maybe she’d have eventually trusted me enough to let me be the support she needed to change her life, too.

Then again, maybe not. Who knows? One thing I do know now, that I learned from all this is: It’s not only a marriage that should be entered into as whole and complete partners. It’s friendships, too. You can’t have an equal and mutually rewarding relationship of any kind, if it’s based on the neediness of any one person in it.

I’m a much stronger woman now than I was when I knew that friend and I surround myself by women equally as strong. We all admire and support each other. But I’ll never get over the loss of that first close friend, I’ll never stop wishing her well and I’ll never stop wondering if our friendship could have had a better ending.

*****

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I just realized today that it is approximately five years since I returned to the US after having lived in Greece for more than seven years. Gosh, these five years have just zipped by. When the weather warms up like it has, I still miss sitting by the Greek sea, sipping retsina with my friends and eating a feta cheese and tomato salad. I keep saying I will get back there one of these days, but so far, I haven’t done it. At least I can still keep up with my people there via email and cheap internet phone and every once in a while one pops in to send a kid to college here or sell the old property that belonged to the family, or what have you. So it’s not like we’ve lost touch. Still, so much has happened in the past five years, that I think I can be forgiven for not getting back as of yet.

Let’s see---well, there was the divorce itself that precipitated the move back. Then there was the sale of the business over there. Then there was the subsequent remarriage. Then there was the anxiety over the divorce, remarriage and business sale. Would I get out of Greece without having to leave my son behind with his father? Did my son really want to come back to the States with me and not stay in Greece with his father? Were my business partner and I happy with the terms of the business sale? Was I making a ridiculously optimistic mistake in getting married again? Did I know if my judgment in personal matters had improved any?

And apart from the anxiety over the divorce and the move and the sale and the remarriage, there was the guilt. Make that GUILT. I was dripping with it. Would my 14-year-old son adjust to all the changes I had forced on him? (We moved back home, but not exactly ‘home‘---we went to the west coast instead of the east where he’d been born, because after living in Greece’s sublime climate, I knew I just couldn’t abide a New York winter.) So we had the absent dad, the new state, the new school, the new step-dad and stepbrothers. There was the English language for him to contend with, as opposed to the Greek one. And I went from being a working mom to a stay-at-home-and-write mom. Every time he had any kind of issue, great or small, my whole body effused with shame---had I destroyed this kid or what? Said kid could really sense that GUILT, too and like the smart kid he is, he used it and used it good. He got at least a year’s free pass just on my self-reproach.

Gee---you’d think with all the anxiety and guilt, I wouldn’t have gained weight in those first two years back. I thought anxiety and guilt made one jittery and therefore gaunt. But, no. Because, you see, despite the anxiety and guilt there was HAPPINESS and love with my new fellow and love and happiness to me means cooking great meals and heavenly desserts and sipping wine by the fireplace we were lucky enough to have in our new flat. So the first two years back in the States, we had nerves, guilt and weight gain. But we also had joy. For the first time in my life, if I’m honest. I discovered in those first two years back, that the distinction between a happy marriage and an unhappy one, is like the distinction between a federal prison sentence that permits traveling privileges with a monitor strapped to your ankle and the exhilaration of complete exoneration. Much to my astonishment, it was---so far, fingers crossed---that different.

Until the car accident. My new husband lost a son, a boy I was just getting to know. But I won’t write about that today. It took us a while to get back on track, yet we’re managing. There is still happiness, but it’s mitigated now with the complete understanding of what sadness and despair truly is.

Now here we are three years later. I’ve spent the last four years writing, writing, writing. And being disgusted with George Bush, the Iraq war, the Patriot Acts and the Military Commissions Act. And being a wife, mother, stepmother, friend and enjoying every minute of those. And going to the gym, whipping myself back into shape and not enjoying that quite so much. But if I’ve learned anything at 51 years of age, it’s that if you have health, life still holds so many wonderful possibilities.

So, there you have it. My first blog. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it. Still---be warned---they won’t all be like this one. Going forward, reading my blogs will not be for the fainthearted. Stay tuned.