The Breaking and The Healing

Today is my 28th wedding anniversary.  I have not seen nor spoken with my husband in nearly a year.

I've heard tell of marriages that end gracefully, where safe conversation supports a healthy acknowledgement of individual shortcomings that sabotage communal growth, and where each partner concedes the need to trade acute pain for chronic hope - but this was not one of those endings.  This marriage ended with angry shouts, denials of responsibility, confused motivations, and a general breakdown of communication.  Neither of us behaved elegantly.

The reasons my marriage failed are complicated and dynamic.  I suspect I will spend the rest of my life trying to understand why it didn't last and what could have been done differently (if anything) to prevent its demise.  I do not intend to discuss those reasons here, as there is no point - my position changes daily with my mood and confidence.  Cause and effect become interchangeable as I try to dissect feeling from circumstance.  I do not hold much trust in any emotion that takes up residence in my body, since I know it is soon replaced by another - sorrow, relief, guilt, shame, joy, optimism, nostalgia, anticipation, fear, fortitude.  But I don't want to discuss that because it is all very messy and personal and kind of gross and also very boring.

What is more interesting, in the most elastic definition of the word, is the external manifestations of the dissolution of an institution.  And by that, I mean the institution of 'Kevin and Audra'.  I have always known that a marriage is something larger than the mere sum of 2 individual hearts.  Man and Woman are additive and divisible back into equal parts, but Husband and Wife are multiplicative.  When you split a marriage in half, there is a rather large remainder that doesn't really belong to either integer.

When a marriage is healthy, being part of an entity that is larger than yourself is amazing.  There is a brazen sense of well being that arises from the creation of something from nothing.  There is a vitality that grows out of mutual development.  But when a marriage is unhealthy, you can feel lost in that largeness, like you are no longer even a contributor to this voracious entity that feeds ceaselessly on your own vital energy. Nonetheless, when an unhealthy marriage ends, you still feel far less than whole...far less than half...

What I failed to anticipate is just how much other people interact with the institution, as opposed to the individuals.  When I reveal the news of the break to other people - especially to other married people (happily or otherwise), I see on their faces that they are checking the details of my account against their own interactions - firstly with 'Kevin and Audra', then secondly with each of us as Kevin or as Audra.  When they are assessing the individuals, there is a degree of compassion, understanding, commiseration but when assessing the marriage as an institution, their reactions are steeped in anxiety, fear, consternation.  If we could fall - after all we have been through together -  what does it mean for them?  I sense they look at me with suspicion, as if I am a cancer that might infiltrate their own tenuous togetherness. 

2017 was a year of demolition and restoration, both emotionally and physically.  One year after being hit by a car, my leg is at about 75% of pre-break capability.  One year after breaking my vows, my heart is overflowing.  In 2018, I am looking forward to building physical strength by hiking, biking, and backpacking and to building emotional strength by doing those activities with the many warm and gracious friends who have rallied around me during this amazing and horrifying year.

Thank you, and Happy New Year.