On Being Damaged Goods
I’ve written a lot about why I believe divorce can be the right thing to do, about why it can actually be a good, positive thing, ending with happier parents and children. And though I’ve taken pains to try to underscore just how difficult and emotionally hard ending a marriage is for everyone involved, I’ve at times been accused of painting a “rosy picture” of divorce – something I certainly never intended.
And since I can only speak of my own experience, my own split and its aftermath, I’d like to pause and address the darker side of what I’ve personally gone through, and where that’s left me.
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I think about death a lot now. And I never used to.
And by “death” I don’t mean The Grim Reaper or The Great Hereafter or The Void, at least not exclusively. I was, admittedly, a big fan of The Smiths growing up, but I certainly have no plans to go all emo at this late date, in my early 40s. No, by death I mean the fleeting, ephemeral, impermanent nature of all things. The extinguishability of everything. How tenuous life and all that we hold dear in it is seems inescapable and obvious to me now. And I can’t say I think that’s a good thing.
But it wasn’t always this way for me, of course. Like most people, I’d always lived with a sense that my life – my home, my friends and family, my marriage, everything – had a ring of permanence and a solidity to it. I felt grounded, unshakeable. There were certain things that would always be true: these few people would be my dear friends, this house would be where I would grow old, my husband and I would be together forever. I wasn’t lying to myself in believing those things – this was reality as I understood it. There was simply nothing to question. And the certainty with which I thought I knew those things, and the immutable faith I had in them, made my disillusionment all the more painful when everything fell apart.
Last night I said to a friend that in many ways I wish I could go back. Not to the marriage, but to the me that was prior to the divorce, that wasn’t terrified all the time, that wasn’t always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Because though I may be happier – and I am – I feel less secure and more uncertain about every aspect of my life now, because I had the experience of watching everything I believed in wholeheartedly and without question evaporate before my very eyes. That does something to you, to your ability to trust anything completely. Now, I think probably more than I should about how if X, Y or Z thing happened I would have no work, no job. I think about how easy it would be for a series of small events to take place that would cause me to lose my house. I think about friends, and know the sad truth: that some of the people who you love and trust with all your heart are more than capable of abandoning you, betraying you in your darkest hours.
It is a kind of heartsickness, this. And I don’t think it’s something I’ll ever completely get over.
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Even when divorce is the right thing, even when when it’s a positive thing that ends with happier parents and children, it is a crushing experience, and there are permanent scars. I imagine since every divorce is different, everyone’s scars are different. Mine is that I have a heightened, almost relentless consciousness of the tenuous nature of things – that in the end, there is nothing anyone can count on with 100% certainty in life. Anyone’s life can be torn apart in an instant, left gutted and unrecognizable. All things go. That sense of walking uncertainly on shifting sand won’t ever leave me. And I am worse for it, to be sure.
Of course, what I’m saying here has always been true – life is change, and nothing is certain. But I wasn’t haunted by that before in the way I am now. That understanding, at most, would manifest in an occasional bout of uneasiness I’d confront when something terrible happened to someone I knew. That truth was, and I think is for most people, like a one’s sense of their own mortality – a dark thing I shoved to the far back of my mind the majority of the time. It’s something I never felt plagued by before. Now I feel sure that it’s something I’ll never be able to contain or hide from as I once did.
What about you? What scars do you, or others you know, bear from divorce? Do you think these will always be there, or that, as the cliche goes, time will eventually heal all wounds, smooth all scars? How have you, or people you know, dealt with the disappointment and disillusionment that comes after a marriage fails?
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Read more from Tracey Gaughran-Perez at her personal blog Sweetney.com
I feel like no matter what, we can never win. If we overly discuss our hurts and fears during and after divorce, we are told to move on, to get past it, to stop blaming. If we don’t talk about the reality enough, we’re not showing the truth. Every wonder wtf people really want to hear and why they even bother to pretend to care? Sometimes I think they only want enough information to try and prevent it happening to them. Like divorce is catching.
Sigh. I think I lost my belief in forever. I can’t even plan my life more than say three months out now. I don’t plan long term anymore, because it’s still weird to plan my life, just as me. I lost my ability to trust in a way. I’ve lost so much and so many people in the past two years, that I have little faith in people really sticking around. I feel broken in so many ways.
At the same time, I’ve stayed friendly with my ex. It was my one goal. To be better at this than my parents were. To make this our issue and my my kids issue. Shrug. Maybe that means people think I’m not as broken as I am. My reality is that I may be broken, but I’m not willing to live my life like I am.
I miss being able to love with my whole heart. Divorce took that from me. I can’t ever again give the whole thing to someone.
I actually liken it to my brief track and field career in middle school. When I started to run hurdles in sixth grade, I had no fear whatsoever. As a result, I could fly over the hurdles. I wasn’t a particularly fast runner, but because of my dance classes I was limber and could leap pretty nimbly.
And then one day, I leapt too soon and landed square between my legs. I broke my hymen and bruised my perineum pretty badly. Afterward, I couldn’t jump another hurdle again. I’d feel myself uncontrollably stop running at the point I was supposed to get ready to spring. I can go over the hurdle, but I have to clumsily climb over it one leg at a time.
I feel that way about love now. I can’t gracefully leap fearlessly into it. I stop, I freak out, and then I clumsily and warily stumble over one leg at a time toward it.
As ever, you put it all so perfectly. My scars are like Snarky’s – I don’t imagine how I could ever love a man wholeheartedly again. I feel riddled with distrust. I’ve always found it hard to open up to someone actually sitting there with me (as opposed to here on the internet) and now that I’ve been so badly betrayed, it just seems impossible.
I also, like Issa, feel broken, damaged, and that many people only see the brave face I put on things. I know, deep down inside, when I’m sitting on the sofa at night sobbing at the sight of PEOPLE being HAPPY together, I’m more broken than most people know.
But you, Tracey, give me hope that this will pass, that the happy wil return and that I’ll be able to love someone again.
Thank you so much for your wonderful way with words…
I can’t trust anymore. It’s been three years and I still have to stop myself from thinking everything my new partner says must be a lie. I’m broken- and while I am so much happier and better off in many ways, I miss being able to just trust someone.
I sat and watched someone hug me, say I love you and walk out the door to a divorce lawyer.
I sat and watched as he told me for months, no, years he KNEW the marriage was over, while constantly telling me he wasn’t going anywhere, that he loved me.
How do you trust anyone again after that?
That is the scar I bear the most prominently. Trust in love. I don’t think I could ever commit to someone again…like you I wait for the other shoe to drop.
I think my parents’ divorce damaged them, and me, the most when they found themselves growing old alone. They both were hopeful of finding happiness with new partners, but it didn’t work out that way. So I’m trying to look after both of them, in separate locations, and it’s just a terrible amount of work and travel. Ideally, married people are each others’ first responder and primary support, but instead I find myself in that role for each of them. They went to a lot of effort to minimize the effect of their divorce on me as a child, but I honestly don’t think they gave any thought to their elderly years. Not to be a huge downer here, but I think the real trauma was after the divorce, realizing the vision of a happier life with a new partner wasn’t going to materialize. And for me the trauma is seeing them old and alone and not being able to keep up with the caregiving. I honestly don’t know what I’ll do to get through it. Their marriage kind of sucked, but this sure sucks a lot too.
Tracy, you articulate situations like no other. Thank you for that. Every time I read something you share about your divorce a little piece of me crumbles because it takes me back to mine. Yes, I’m still heartsick, and it’s been so many years now. I have moved on and have two wonderful children but the past still haunts and hurts. How do you overcome a situation where someone you trust and love tells you that he doesn’t love you anymore or may never have loved you at all? I live my life these days always on guard as if something may be taken from me at any moment.
Avasmommy puts it perfectly. I can’t trust. I’m too afraid to let myself even get close enough to anyone to trust them, so I haven’t had more than a couple of first dates in the last 2 years. The walls I have put up are too high for anyone to get in or for me to get out. While I’m not happy, at least I’m not being hurt by anyone but myself.
Wow. I feel like I could’ve written this. I never thought I’d be 38 (knocking on 39′s door), absolutely dying inside for another baby and about to sign divorce papers. I too feel like sometimes people think divorce is contagious. And I feel so very alone :( Thank you for writing from your heart.
Tracey,
I’ve known you a long time, and I’m sorry to have this particular thing in common with you. It’s awful. I can tell, you six years out, that is does get easier. Not great, but easier.
I thought hard about what’s been said about trust…I don’t think I lost the ability to trust, I got smarter about whom I trusted. Took a long time to tease apart the difference. There is no more blind trust, that exhilarating, trusting leap. You will step carefully now, but whatever you so, keep on stepping. (Btw someone once told me, and I hated it because it was true and made me very uncomfortable, that you can’t sit out a depression. I was all, watch me. But still, it’s true.)
I didn’t think I would ever find someone tolerable again, let alone dependable, loving, accepting, responsible, and who would love me right back. Who wasn’t looking for flaws. My Guy and I are still poking each other after two years, asking, where did you come from? Are you for real? Why didn’t we meet twenty years ago? And I think the answer is that we had to feel that pain to appreciate this balm. I wouldn’t go back, because as you say I don’t want the butterfly effect. I don’t even think I could convey any of this to the 20-year-old me, or even the 30-year-old me. I had to earn my wisdom, endure the scarification, and now am cautiously but increasingly enjoying what I really needed and wanted but didn’t know back then.
As a child of divorce, I know that children learn about their parents during a divorce and that they go through their own scarification – who to trust, how not to feel disloyal 100% of the time because you are always with one parent and not the other, learning to reconcile how your parents can still love you madly while driving each other crazy. Every time one of my children asks why we just can’t get along and get back together, I suggest they go a week without fighting with each other and ask me again.
I’m finishing up a book, 42 Rules for Divorcing with Children, and would love to share it with you and welcome any wisdom I haven’t covered or specific, actionable things a divorcing parent can do to survive the process with grace. (Aim high, right?)
Also? I find I lose my internal spellcheck when I’m especially passionate about something.
As I child of divorce, the way you feel now reminds me of how I felt as a child, especially this paragraph: Mine is that I have a heightened, almost relentless consciousness of the tenuous nature of things – that in the end, there is nothing anyone can count on with 100% certainty in life. Anyone’s life can be torn apart in an instant, left gutted and unrecognizable. All things go. That sense of walking uncertainly on shifting sand won’t ever leave me. And I am worse for it, to be sure.
You nailed it.
Having my own children is what helped me love again with my whole heart. But I live in fear that because of circumstances beyond my/our control, my husband and I will have to divorce. (And yes, I just ordered “In Spite of Everything.”)
Thank you for your candor in your post. I recently went through a divorce, and the worst part about it is, it seems like it’s still happening. The man who was kind, thoughtful, and loving (at least in appearances), is now going after me with a pitchfork, and what hurts the most, is that he is using the kids to punish me.
But all that aside. The way I cope, and the only way I could fathom coping is knowing that the only person I can really turn to—can really trust—is God. He is the only constant. And I know He loves me. Even when I feel the most unlovable. The most rejected. The most despised. The most abandoned.
I know He is watching, and that He is mindful of me. I know He loves my children. And I know that one day things will feel right again, and that the joy of little things in life will return again. And when that happens, I know I will be able to look back on this horrible chapter, and see how He has shaped me into a better person. That is where I place my faith.