It was the year that effectively kicked my ass.
Friends sit around a table and discuss how amazing 2011 was. They're referencing the Arab Spring, Madison, Occupy, and other amazing grassroots efforts that reignited the spirit of people's victory here and around the world. I try to bask in the same feeling of solidarity, but my year was decidedly more complicated.
It was early July when C and I officially split, but the months leading up to that point were inwardly tumultuous. I was intensely focused on my classes and internship, my doula mamas, my writing, and anything else to keep myself distracted from my marriage's imminent demise. Friends didn't see much of me, and if they did, I was distant and disengaged.
When the walls of your lovely complacent life come crashing down, it's excruciating. For me, it didn't come as a slow, steady fall but as an all-at-once implosion. I spent the better part of a week lying in bed either sleeping or wishing I was asleep. I was taking small fistfuls of Klonopin at regular intervals. Friends came by to force feed me and make sure my cats had food themselves. I didn't shower. I didn't go to consults. I even missed a job interview.
The exact details of the next few weeks are too fuzzy (or just too depressing) to write out here, so I'll skip ahead to early October.
I'm outside in the back yard on a cool evening. The air feels clearer, as the summer's oppressive humidity is finally gone. A couple of girlfriends are coming by in a while. I'm basking in the fact that I have just built my first fire... C always did it before (he's very good at it). I realize the obvious symbolism here: she who can build her own fire is she who can survive, as such an ability is at the crux of survival. Somewhere in the past few weeks, survival had become second nature and I was ready to thrive. I decided later that night (after about a bottle and a half of wine) that I was a fucking fire goddess and was completely in control of everything I wished to be in control over. I awoke the next morning with a renewed sense of self... once the hangover cleared, of course.
I believe it was somewhere on the LIRR later that month when I realized how long this had needed to happen. I wasn't in love anymore, and I wasn't sure exactly how long that had been going on. I was thrilled. I returned to Greensboro during the heydays of our Occupy encampment, spent some nights cooking and hanging out, and felt alive for the first time in months.
The month that followed was nothing if not interesting, as I decided I needed to put out all my fires with gasoline and basically explode into a brilliant display of pure energy. Thankfully my near-daily yoga practice kept me grounded in stillness when stillness was needed (see the many previous posts on the matter). I have only my dearest friends and comrades to thank for the constant support and ongoing love during this time... the life of a ball of pure energy is nothing if not ridiculous. Energy does dumb shit... let me rephrase, it lives on stupidity and bad choices. There were more than a couple of mornings when I didn't exactly recall driving home from wherever I'd been the previous night. I can only thank the universe for delivering me home safely so that I could live to see my current lovely existence.
I'm being purposefully vague here, as I'm not a huge fan of putting every ounce of my personal life onto a public space, but suffice to say I am happier than I have been in maybe years. The months of November and December have been phenomenal. I haven't thrown caution to the wind, believe me on that, but when something beautiful rises from the ashes of your life's most profound implosion, you can't not feel like the luckiest person on the planet.
Divorce is something people pity, something you're supposed to come away from with regrets and anger. But I maintain neither regret nor anger at the way my marriage ended. 2011 was complicated. It was the year the relationship I have maintained for my entire adult life ended, abruptly at that, leaving in its wake a whole host of anxiety and pain. It was the single most excruciating experience either of us could have endured. But the gaping wound is fast on the mend, and I'm looking forward into 2012 with a renewed sense of hope, a new outlook on myself and on love in general.
That being said, there is a very good chance that I will look back on 2011 as the best fucking year of my life.
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