Really Good, Actually(91)

I leaned against the rough surface of the wall and felt the damp from the soil seeping through my skirt. I rolled my eyes and gritted my teeth, but it didn’t matter, the tears were coming. How silly, I thought. How unnecessary. I had survived the big, bad thing—more stressful than moving, only slightly less stressful than death, people said—and was doing my little therapy sessions and getting my steps in and drinking my endless glasses of water. I was experiencing delight and seeing beauty in life. The good things were back! And yet they were happening—now would always happen—without the person I’d hoped to share them with. Tonight was merely another in an endless parade of birthday parties he’d miss, news he’d never celebrate, gossip I couldn’t come home and tell him after expressly promising not to tell a soul. I had worked so hard to get my head above water, only to look around and discover I was in the big, freaky ocean, alone.

A truck rumbled past, leaving silence behind it. I stuffed the collar of my T-shirt into my mouth and sobbed. In the interest of speeding things up, I lay down on the grass and tried to think about positive things. I was healthy and safe. A new career direction was emerging, and the carnations on my dresser were still alive. Tomorrow I would have a late lunch with Merris at a Polish place she liked where everything tasted like cabbage. After that I could do anything: lie around, read, walk down to the lake and just look at it. The weather was supposed to be beautiful all week, and until we ran out there would be cake for breakfast; I could even eat it in bed, if I wanted.

During my marriage I had taken to calling our bed “The Restaurant” because I liked eating in there so much. Jon thought this was disgusting and appointed himself city councilor, always trying to shut The Restaurant down for health code violations like crumbs or spills. As time passed, I knew, little details like this would fade from my memory; I would fixate less often on our relationship and the low-grade horror of its ending. One day I would climb into bed with a sandwich and think, I used to have a name for this, and not know what it was. I snorted at the idea of pulling this off for a day, even a few hours. It was taking so long. It would take so much longer.

I sighed at the thought of all the unsexy time ahead: nights in with my thoughts and feelings, earnest efforts at knowing and possibly (ugh) loving myself, the utter hassle and enormous privilege of deciding what I wanted to do with my life, my weekends, my heart. The karaoke fantasies and app-based mania of early divorce days were giving way to the reality of it: a quiet, slightly undignified plod toward . . . what? Eventually pulling my head out of my ass and realizing there were other things to worry about? I knew that already. It had been driving me to distraction all year.

I stayed on the ground a little longer, looking up at the sky and trying to take my losing-it level from an eight down to a more manageable five or six. Helen had taught me some brain exercises and I tried a few of them now, taking in my surroundings and naming textures, shapes, and colors. I did some humming and gargling, secure in the knowledge that no one outside the wall could hear me desperately stimulating my vagus nerve in secret. I started to feel more settled and present very quickly. (The most annoying thing about these exercises was their efficacy.) I sat up and let out a big, declarative exhale, bringing my knees to my chest. Inside my bra, my left boob vibrated. I fished out my phone and looked at the message: wasn’t sure if i should text, but wanted to say happy birthday xS.

I opened my mouth and ran my fingers along the ridged, wet collar of my T-shirt. I stared at the message, adjusting the brightness of my phone so my face shone in the dark, and let out a surprised sound somewhere between a gasp and a hiccup. The little x with the initial was classic Simon: soft and sincere and a bit officiously formal. He had once told me he composed all important text messages in the Notes app first, only copying and pasting when he knew exactly what he wanted to say. I imagined him trying out different sign-offs: (it’s Simon, by the way); xo Big S; your erstwhile lover, Simon. I reached down to scratch a mosquito bite on the back of my ankle and began to laugh.

What now?! What fucking now? The temptation to call him or go to his house was very strong. But he had not invited me there, he had merely said happy birthday. He was not actually asking to see me at all, but he was reaching out with affection after twelve a.m., which was not nothing. I would just . . . text him tomorrow, then? See if he wanted to “catch a movie”? Ludicrous. I laughed as loud as I’d cried, my shoulders shaking, my head in my hands. You little idiot, I thought. You sweet, deranged moron.

I tried to center myself, to find some calm. But how could I? My phone glowed white blue, and my butt felt soft on the earth, and I was sitting in an actual graveyard having some tiny private epiphany. If it wasn’t Simon, now, it would be somebody else someday, and wasn’t that insane? I would have to figure out how to love them without freaking out, and some small part of me would have to believe that it was real. More outrageous than this was the possibility that one day, it might be.

I thought about next year, how I had no idea what it would be like, who I would meet, what they would do. Things would happen to me, and I would make decisions, and sometimes they would work out and sometimes they wouldn’t. It would carry on like that, over and over, until ideally, I got incredibly old and died in my sleep, maybe with somebody nice nearby, or a cat that would definitely eat part of my face, but what would I care, I’d be drifting around in that endless nothing space I could not think about too long without becoming sweat-drenched and queasy. It was a funny idea, my existing for years and years, shit happening all over the place, everything seeming so Big and Meaningful. And it was, but also it wasn’t. I would feel one way for a while, and then I would feel another way, and it would never be forever, because nothing is.