This morning, as we waited to drive around the gi-normous moving truck hindering a quarter of the block, we watched a new family move their things into our old neighbors’ house.
“What happened,” my husband asked, “where’d they go?”
“They got divorced this past summer,” I reminded him, “she took the boys and moved to Wyoming, he went to Florida.”
“Divorce, huh? Hhmmm.”
My son, who was best friends with one of their sons, sat in the back seat and fiddled with his backpack. We all shared an awkward and unplanned moment of silence for another marriage that’s dissolved into that ever growing group of “tried but just couldn’t make it work” couples.
Believe me, I’m not judging. God knows I’ve been there. I have an ex -husband. I’ve been a single parent before and it’s exhausting, physically and mentally. I’ve even separated from my current husband a few times over the last decade and a half. Marriage is trying, but being divorced has its own demons, too.
I can’t imagine, nor do I want to, starting a new life alone after it feels like you already spent twenty years building it with someone else. I know this happens all the time, it’s a fact of life, and I do believe people deserve to be happy, even if that means you need to be alone, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with me telling you the idea of divorce still makes me sad.
My marriage is far from perfect, in fact, at the stage we’re in now, some might even call us unconventional. I’ll refrain from providing details, and no, not because it’s too terrible for print. Lets just say we’re not as close as we used to be.
After a decade of cinematic worthy drama; recovering from the stupidity of our early twenties, sustaining the overwhelming process of starting a business together, praying through the scary times, screaming and throwing things through the worst, it never occurred to me that marriage not only has to learn to survive drama, it also has to withstand things that seem as menial as boredom! Good God, who knew?! I sure didn’t.
Most of the marriages I’ve watched while growing up, including my parents’, either ended in divorce or carry on only to live out a nasty cycle of self destruction. Suffice to say, I didn’t have the best models of relationships to learn from. In fact, I held off on marrying my current husband until we’d already had all our kids and bought our first house, all because I didn’t believe a sanctity of marriage existed. (For those of you who follow my blog, but, of course, how else would *ss backwards Maria do it?)
I grew up thinking that marriage was a farce and happiness a delusion and for a long time I dubbed anyone who believed in either or both, weak. No, I am not kidding. That’s how deluded I was, I thought everyone else was the idiot. Actually, it’s probably more accurate to say that’s how f*cked up I was.
Fortunately, twenty years later, I think I’ve finally figured it out, at least I’m in the process of. So my marriage isn’t perfect, I probably couldn’t trade my kids off if I offered a money back guarantee, our family is dysfunctional to say the least, but we all love each other, in our own screwy ways. A close friend once told me that my house was the only place she’d ever been where chaos and yelling was a sign that all was well. I took it as a compliment.
I know now that there is such a thing as happiness and some of us are lucky enough to find marriages that do work more often than they don’t. They’re not wrapped up pretty like they were on The Brady Bunch or The Cosby Show. They look more like the blue collared couple, Dan and Roseanne Connor; slightly overweight, fatigued, bearing equally sharp tongued children, and living in a less than sparkly clean house with a mortgage payment that kicks their *sses. That’s us, but we’re also happy.
On my husband’s best day he resembles nothing near a Prince Charming, not even a second rate boot leg, but even on his worst day, I’ve never wanted anything more than him. Maybe that’s the key to how we’ve made it thus far. On a list of pros and cons, even on the days when it’s a narrow split of 49-51 in favor of, we’d still rather be together than apart and for that, I’m blessed.
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