What Am I Crying About? Still?!

I’ve been crying. Not about the end of my marriage, not really.

I was ready for that—beyond ready—and though I’ve certainly felt sad and mourned a permanent change in a formative relationship, I’ve also felt relief and release and a deep, glowing stillness.

But I’ve been crying intermittently for the past two weeks. Uncontrollably. Sometimes the timing, other times the volume. And this is not who I have been. Ever.

The divorce became an on-paper reality at the end of 2017. I had planned a trip for the end of January, and eagerly awaited the perfect combination of new places with old friends. New places and old friends, however, can stir up some pretty potent soul-sludge.

It hasn’t been about the end, but about the beginning.

I don’t want to be who I was when I was younger, but that person had some pretty great stuff going on, and some pretty big dreams that she gave up on way too easily. One of the old friends I saw absolutely pierced my heart when he told me this:

You’ve been drawing your life really small, making it fit into somebody else’s little box, and you’ve crouched down and scrunched in and tried to get smaller.

You don’t have to do that anymore.

You can draw yourself bigger.

And however big you think that should be,
draw yourself bigger than that.

Do I dare? What does that mean, even?

What does it mean, as several people advised me over the course of a week in a new place, to set a threshold for what I want in a partner, to communicate it gently but honestly from the start, and to walk away before compromising too much?

Because when I think about that, a not small part of me thinks that being brutally honest about the interests, the manner, and the outlook of the partner I want (I deserve? I deserve.) means I will die surrounded by many wonderful friends but not a true partner. (Hello, drama. Apparently, the rising tide has loosed a teenager from her mooring deep in my past … )

I thought that one reason I wanted a divorce was to be alone. But what I really wanted was to not be lonely. Why does that have to even mean a pair, a new coupling? Was the fault in the execution or the paradigm? Was it hoping that in finding that partner, the person reflected back to me would be the person I want to be but have not yet become? Don’t have time to become?

Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

Do I have to leave where I am? Do I have to change my entire professional focus? Get a new house, new furniture? Would that seem like drawing bigger but instead be such a violent erasure that it rips the page?

So, I’m crying. I’m heartbroken after the trip. Broken in large part because so much of it filled my heart up in wondrous ways, spilling out through my eyes and forcing me to work harder to see through the blear.

There’s pain, and everyone says it is good because it means I can still feel and true enough, it’s great to know I have that capacity, but I feel like I’m a wire about to shoot off sparks and burn down a house.

It’s hard to keep it all afloat while making time to sit in the pain and the confusion and keep digging right in the spot that is bound to make it worse before it makes it better. When you know you have to make time for emails and refilling the dog’s prescription and figuring out just how many accounts you have with the phone company and managing to keep more than protein bars and cashews in the breadbox, how can you release yourself into body-shaking sobs that leave you literally dehydrated? How can you stop yearning and wishing and shift back to plodding and planning? Denying the intensity seems wrong, but indulging it seems decadent and reckless.

So I find myself just letting the tears come, often at times that once I would have felt were inappropriate. I would have been embarrassed, wanted to hide. I’m busy but I can’t turn this part off, so I’ve become someone crying while figuring out which container of strawberries at the grocery has the fewest mushy ones, crying like rain while the sun is out.