Be grateful for the divorce!
My friends’ marriages are falling apart. Strong and good, they are collapsing like houses of cards. The reasons are vague and not obvious, especially for their mothers. Doesn’t drink, doesn’t beat, brings money, loves children—what else do you need? Yes, what? How to explain? Divorces bring out the worst in people. The most generous people become stingy, the kindest—ruthless, the quietest—scream and break dishes.
The days become slow as jelly, flowing slowly and angrily. And in the morning you are tired of this day in advance, flooded with disappointment in the one you loved for many years. Friends have changed a lot, even externally, right before your eyes. One lost 12 kilograms and cut her hair into a bob. The second, on the contrary, has become rounder, has rosy cheeks, and has started to look very good. In spite of everyone.
Stress hit from different sides, but it hit.
We didn’t plan to meet the three of us. It just happened by chance. But when they met… I was amazed at how consonant the women were in pain and how their feelings coincided. Both over the abyss of lies. Both in some black-and-white movie that seemed not to be with them… Two different stories with the same ending.
How important it is to understand that divorce is a happy ending and how important it is to stop dragging the past into the present because the past has grown and changed and essentially no longer exists. I introduced two friends who were going through a divorce. And left. I think they didn’t notice, absorbed in the discovery that their pain was not unique…
I dedicate this text to Vika and Alina. I love you very much, girls. And I support you.
You taught me lessons. But not the ones you expected. At first, you screamed and didn’t apologize. I became submissive. You interpreted submissiveness as the realization that you were right. But it was just fear. I hid in it from the screaming and listened to your pulsating pain from there.
You offended me. You said hurtful words. But these words were not about me. They were about you. Your darts flew at me but did not reach. More precisely, they reached, but reflected back and returned to your heart. You were hurt. I felt sorry. For you. I will not dissemble; I felt sorry for myself too. But pity for me is tears, and tears are only an indicator of an unsolved problem. And unsolved problems need to be solved.
Abuse is psychological violence. You were so proud that you didn’t hit me. But you did. And the bruises weren’t obvious, but those broken promises, those humiliating conversations when you looked at your phone and not at me, those cold dinners, that exhausting silence, manipulating my dependence on you, leveling my role in the family—that’s also violence. Not letting me go to my friends, not keeping promises, forgetting about an anniversary, not caring about my problems… That’s all it is.
That’s exactly how I feel—raped. I’m ashamed and in pain. I’m bleeding. And I’m afraid that I provoked the rapist. But I just don’t know how.
You wanted to show me how much you did for me. And you took away what you gave. You took it away from me so that I would be scared and realize: I am nothing without him.
But I don’t understand. Why present bills? You gave it yourself; I didn’t ask. You liked to give, buy, protect, and pamper. By taking away fur coats and jewelry, you don’t take away my memories of happiness; you take away my respect for you.
A fur coat is fur. Every fiber warmed me with your love. I was already warm in it, and you can’t take that away. And the fact that I’ll be wearing a down jacket this winter doesn’t scare me. What scares me is that you, having lived with me for ten years, are sure that by taking away the fur coat, you’ll be able to teach me a lesson.
You left so I could realize how much I’d lost. I just tried living without you, and I liked it.
Without you—it means without the humiliating service of your mood, without waiting for you “as much as necessary,” without the fear that you will scream simply because there, in the big world, you were offended, and this, ours, little one, you created in order to spit out the blood from your broken lips there.
I will not say a bad word about you to the children. But what they saw is their relationship with the world and with you. All these years I have been working as your lawyer, inventing reasons to justify your actions, and feeding them to the children.
I resign from this position. From now on, you are responsible for your own mistakes. And if you pushed me in front of my daughter, if you didn’t congratulate your son on his birthday, then it’s not “Dad had a hard day,” it’s “Dad is doing something very bad.”
You taught me a great lesson, for which I am very grateful. You stabbed me in the back, and there was a chain that held my wings. And I spread them. I can fly. And I didn’t know it myself. I almost believed you when you said that I was an empty shell without you. What a big world it turns out to be. And before, I thought that you were my big world. Until you turned my world into a garbage bag, into which you threw all the waste of your mood.
Oh, how grateful I am to you for leaving.
You took yourself away from me and wanted me to suffer. And in doing so, you gave me myself, and this is the most precious gift in my new life.
You know, it turns out that a down jacket warms better than fur. Fur is the warm silence of small strangers’ deaths stitched into one piece. And I walked around wrapped in the violence you gave me. But a down jacket is made of fabric, and no one was hurt in its production. And I am wrapped in natural warmth, not infused with other people’s suffering.
And yesterday my daughter knitted me a stunning bracelet from multi-colored threads. And it is more expensive than any of the most expensive necklaces you have given me. Because it is about unconditional love, which will not end with a wave of the conductor.
And here, above the writing in the lie, I tell you from the bottom of my heart, with all sincerity: thank you for the divorce!
