My husband said he wanted a divorce two years ago. We had been married
for twenty-two years. As a mom, a wife, a rural woman with horses and
dogs and a heart that had sunk down into the country that we lived in,
I expected to be devastated, destroyed, yanked out by the roots and
left to wither like I had no life of my own. All of that and none of
that happened.
What I felt in a rush, like a vacuum, was relief. The other emotions
would come later.
I realize now that where I expected devastation and shock, a strange elation rose to the surface. I knew on some level that this was my chance at remembering myself. Remembering what my voice sounded like alone, without the chorus speaking in tandem -- who I was supposed to be, who my lovely girls thought I was, and who I remembered myself as being. Who I was before I lost myself in the communal. All of those voices were fictions on some level, but also everlasting truths.
It’s a funny thing what love can do. In the giving, the pleasing, the peacemaking, I lost my voice. I became dumbstruck. I never really knew it was happening. I kept talking right through it. I spoke my feminist jargon and believed my self-confident demeanor was a true reflection of who I really was. In marriage, however, we give things up. We compromise, we stop asking for so much, right? In favor of the family. In favor of the peace. In favor of the good of all. It is expected and considered healthy to do so. It’s a partnership, after all.
My ex wasn’t a bad guy. Really. He was a very different sort, for sure. He just didn’t get it. According to him my writing and music were ploys to attract attention. How shocked I was at the implications of that. Never having questioned my need to write, to perform, to play, I shrank from the accusations of egotism and began a secret life of sinful pursuits; writing when no one was home, playing music when he was out of earshot, hiding my journals like they were some sort of illicit manuscript that should be shipped in a brown paper bag.
In the end, the proverbial well just ran dry. The words and the tunes went underground. The cacophony slowed, quieted, and eventually fell silent.
All of this seems laughable now that I have distance and hindsight, but, God, how painful it was to sever the ties and begin the reclamation.
Now, I teach writing to high school kids. Every time I enter a classroom I learn something else about the voice that I silenced. Every lesson I teach brings me back a piece of myself. To shed the shrill isolation of rural marriage and enter a classroom of teachers that celebrate voice, and listen to that voice, and appreciate what is being said is the single most liberating thing I have experienced since I began this journey. When my fellow teachers share a strategy that will work for my kids in the classroom, it works for me as well. I can feel another word of my own come back to me.
To trust in this process is exhilarating, like stepping off a cliff
blind -- diving, freefalling and believing -- hoping that there will be
water below. These colleagues and friends are the pool at the base of
that cliff. All of the water that was dammed up, running silently
underground, has come bubbling back, with the help of these friends who
listen, who advise, and who have given me a chance to speak again.