The Separation Chronicles: At What Cost?

For the past seven months I’ve hardly been able to think about any other question than “At what cost?”. At what cost comes compromise? At what cost comes pleasure? At what cost comes a life of integrity—not by the standards of others, but for my own sense of wholeness?

At what cost comes living authentically? Like, literally, what does it cost me and everyone involved? I haven’t been writing about what getting divorced is costing me (and others) because talking about the cost of things is awkward and vulgar. It makes people uncomfortable to talk about class realities, to talk about money. It makes me uncomfortable to talk about how terrified I am to be poor again, to talk about my worries about how this will affect my kids in the long term. And, besides, I’ve brought this all on myself, so don’t I deserve to suffer in silence a bit? 

I spent this weekend at my husband’s house, at what was very recently our house. He has taken the kids to a martial arts tournament and, given that we are also co-parenting three dogs who live in that house, I need to be there for potty walks and meals and snuggles. 

Because of the tight housing situation in the college town where I live, I will have to move at least twice before I am settled. My ex and I agreed that it made sense for me to leave anything I wouldn’t need right away there at the house, so that I could take my time packing it up to be stored in the garage where it would wait for more permanent arrangements. It’s also nice for the kids not to experience my sudden disappearance from the house that I have put so much energy into making a home these last two years.

I visit the house regularly to prepare a Friday night family meal and to help with dog walking when I can; but I haven’t spent the night there for six weeks. When I realized I would be spending the night, immediately I started worrying about where I should sleep. Not in the big bed that I used to share with the kids: my ex has that room and bed now (and, as we are both seeing other people, I don’t want to think too much about what might go on in that bed). Not in my sons’ beds: they’re not big enough to accommodate all three dogs who will want to be in the same room with me. Not downstairs in the bedroom that used to be my ex’s: too cold to be down there in January and it still feels like his room. I opt for the pull-out sofa bed in the living room—a place for guests. 

In a way, I feel like I have become a guest, not only in my old home, but also in my what I had thought was my life. Together we had the cute kids, the dogs, the light-filled house in a nice neighborhood in a good school district. We weren’t rich, but I was plenty comfortable. If the house or the car needed an unexpected repair, for example, it wasn’t the end of the world. Now, I’m in a different place, or rather an all-too-familiar-place, where an unexpected expense might very well feel like the end of the world. I have it easier than some who’ve been in my position—although I took a career break because of motherhood, I do have a job and eventually will have a house again (barring the unexpected), though maybe not light-filled, or maybe in the next town over where things aren’t so expensive. Being in a place of such uncertainty causes anxiety to bubble up regularly and I am leaning hard on my spiritual practices to stay the course.

At what cost is all this disruption? The separation agreement has been signed, assets divided, and I can tell you that separation, following my bliss, comes at a great financial and emotional cost. And it is scary because—although I have that steady little current that is holding me fast, that little current that has pushed me to take a hard left on the path stretched out before me—it is scary because I won’t know for sure until years from now—if ever—that I’ve made the right decision. All I can know is what a life of compromise and pretending was costing me.

Recently I read a line in George Ella Lyon’s poem Body Speaks (in Back to the Light, 2021, UPK): “You can’t keep what’s false/ if you want what’s true.” For a long time a lot of my life has felt false. Everyone says that to make a marriage work, there must be compromise. But I felt like I was making so many compromises, I was turning into something very false. I felt like I was hiding behind all the nice things in the life my ex and I had built. And it seemed to me that he was having a similar experience. I won’t go into to all the dramatic details about why I felt that we couldn’t find our way to something more meaningful together: I’ll say only that after much thought, I didn’t trust that what-was-between-us would carry us to other side of all-that-had-died, to the place of “what’s true.” 

But what is true? It is that steady little current that pulses stronger each day. It is the small, still voice that whispers encouragingly as I make my way through this dark forest. It is the belief in my own magic, in my own power. It is something beyond words. And getting in touch with that something is worth the cost.