People tell me all of the time that they are surprised that I share all of my life on this blog, but of course the truth is not so simple. There are many parts of my life that I do not share and have never shared on the blog or in my books, people can’t know what they don’t see. Much of my life remains private and will always stay that way, the truth is I am an intensely private person who has worked to be more open. One profoundly significant part of my life that I have never written about is my divorce, which I consider the most painful and devastating failure of my life. I got divorced about five years ago, ending a 35-year-old marriage. I mentioned once that I was getting divorced, I never mention it again, and Paula Span, the woman who shared my life for most of it, vanished from my life here.
The decision to get divorced was, in many ways, the most important decision of my life, the best and the most shattering. It destroyed my family, cost me a lifetime of friendships, altered my relationship with my daughter, triggered a breakdown that nearly cost me my life, took away all of my savings, plunged me into financial struggles and then, ultimately and very surprisingly and wondrously, led to a rebirth, to my life with Maria. Someone told me that getting divorced is like being in a car crash every day for two or three years. This was so. I could not believe the storms that raged around me after the divorce – the recession, my emotional collapse, the disintegration of publishing, the implosion of the housing market. I was utterly overwhelmed, drowning in panic and pills, bills and responsibilities. I did not expect to survive without Paula.
If not for Maria, I would not have.
Paula is a very good and gifted person, both of us had lived meaningful and productive lives together for 35 years, and neither of us sensed how much my move to Bedlam Farm corroded our marriage and began to pull us away from one another. We lived mostly apart for nearly six years, convincing ourselves and one another – and everybody else – that this was a loving and evolved way in which to live. The only people I could not fool where my readers, the people who read my books and the blog. They always knew, I later learned, they saw it before I did. They understood what they weren’t seeing as well as what they were.
When the mask came off, Paula and I were both just broken into pieces, neither of us ever imagined being divorced, but we promised one another we would separate amicably, we would accept mediation, we would not fight one another, would not get caught up in the legal system, we would think of our daughter.
Just as we could not keep our vows, neither could we keep these promises to one another. When you start talking to and through lawyers, trust, faith and human contact is washed away as if by a tidal wave. Good intentions to not survive long in legal documents, not when the system asks you to fight like mice over cheese for the bits and pieces of a long life together. We became angry, fearful, defensive, aggrieved. I began thinking of Paula as some fearful and demonic figure, out to take my life away. I can only imagine what she thought of me.
Paula and I, two people who had spoken every day for decades, who were always an “us,” who raised a wonderful child together, who supported each other in our demanding and much loved work, who vacationed together and struggled through life, health and purpose together, stopped speaking at all except through lawyers, documents, demands and counter-demands. All the good stuff was washed away in a cloud of lawyer’s letters and demands and counter-demands. We had become the mice fighting for the cheese, the very thing we have vowed never to be. I felt us slipping into a kind of legalistic hell, we simply could not any longer work things out together, could not trust each other, could not, finally, talk to each other.
This awful state – it tears at my heart to write about it – lasted for more than four years until both of us, finally spent and weary and heartsick, simply ran out of issues to argue over, things to worry about it, documents to request and pore over, letters and memos to write. Finally, there was nothing left, no money to fight over, no issues to resolve, no sense of us. Some battles end in victory in defeat, others simply expire out of exhaustion and my partner in life for so many years and I simply faded from one another’s lives, a perhaps inevitable but terrible and sad thing. It was never what I wanted to happen, never what I meant to happen. Life is like that, it doesn’t really care sometimes what you want. But it always felt as if a piece of me, a limb, had simply been torn off and sometimes, despite my great happiness, it still does. Sometimes Paula’s name will simply come out of my mouth at the oddest times.
This awful and sad state ended this week when she and I suddenly began talking to one another again, and not in any kind of anger or judgment or conflict. Paula is on vacation, in the place we used to go, my daughter and her boyfriend are there, the old construct of family is there, this always stirs sad things in me. Our marriage is long over, we will not be one another’s best friends, but we can speak again, and easily and warmly. We can care about one another and wish each other well. We can be there together for Emma if and when she ever needs us. Even the most toxic poisons weaken and fade.
This was such a gift to me, to be able to communicate with her in the spirit of warmth and good will which marked our long and faithful and supportive marriage to one another, our lives as parents, as friends, as lovers one time. I became a writer when Paula bought a desk and put it in our bedroom and said, “you’ve always want to write, go to it.” She put up with five years of my struggling through rejections to publish my first book. I did the same for her. She became a journalist for the Washington Post when I agreed to be at home and take care of Emma and do the shopping and cooking and carpooling. And then there was Emma, having a child together is a bond that can never really be broken.
We always helped one another, respected one another and for many years, loved one another. Life is filled with crisis and mystery, and ultimately I had to leave my family and follow my hero journey to Bedlam Farm, where my life changed again and again and I began to find and fulfill my destiny. This was not a journey Paula could make or wanted to make and so our life together came undone. How, I wonder, did we end up in such conflict, so distant, so far apart and at odds and for so long? A therapist told me that is often how people who care for one another separate, it’s the only way they can do it.
Still, I cannot be sorry I got divorced, I am grateful I chose love over security, love over the familiar, love over the safe and the known. I am grateful I choose life.
Divorce is nothing but a road to hurt, and I see that road is ending for me now, Paula and I have gotten to a better place. We have come back to see the good parts of one another, and in so doing, to save the good parts of ourselves and honor them. It is important to me that I speak her name here, that she exists here, even if briefly. I can’t speak for Paula, only for myself – I have not mentioned her name on this blog since 2008, and it is good to write it again – but my life is rich and full and filled with love, and want the best for her and I see that she wants the same for me. I hope she is as happy and fulfilled as I am, I think she is.
The poison of divorce is that sometimes people need to see the worst in one another in order to endure the pain of change and separation. How do you dissect a life together in a loving and amicable way? Some people can do it, we could not, I think oddly enough that we just cared too much for one another. But people can find redemption, I can find redemption. If they are lucky, if they are healthy, they can come back to the good, and it is a great gift to me to feel and see that this happening. I have learned that there is no point in tearing myself up over the past, in judging Paula or me. What a relief to let go of that. My soul is lighter today. A meaningful life is at least in part about seeking redemption, about being authentic.
I love my new life, but am so grateful to be able to acknowledge after those cold, angry and awful years, what I once loved about the old.
