I Think It's Fair to Say We Tried—

“I think it’s fair to say we tried—” I started.

“But—” He started over me. As my words reached his ear on the other end of the line, on the other side of the country, I held my breath; he repeated, more pointedly this time, “BUT—” His insistence on continuing to speak rather than listen was all too reminiscent of our current and past conflicts, contradictions, contraindications.

“Go ahead,” I prompted him, letting my point go.

He wanted to make his point instead. He insisted on talking over me, interjecting with the second ‘but’ as my technologically-time-delayed words reached his ears in the moment just after he uttered his first ‘but.’ I wasn’t trying to interrupt his point, I just saw an opening to interject, and had something to say. BUT—he felt that he was losing control over the conversation, and needed to regain it.

I let it go willingly. As he continued on to make his point, I was half-listening and half-distracted by the mild annoyance of his insistence on not being interrupted, on his patterns of incessant talk, self-aggrandizing and philosophizing and commiserating and all the like. I felt glad that at the end of the call, I would get to hang up and take a deep sigh of relief, take a big step back and away from him, and not have to be subjected to his performative communication styles anymore, or his hidden-in-plain-sight shaming that inevitably comes when others dare to think they might have something more important to say than whatever he’s on about. Grateful that on the other side of the call, I’d get to return to myself, and let myself be, just as I am—and especially, without him.

But for now I was on the phone with him, and I was trying to keep it light, amicable; I was trying my best to be fully present with all of it: my pain, and his. I knew I was bringing the big pain; ringing a bell calling us home to dinner, or maybe home to ourselves—forever-more residing in different houses, eating off of different plateware, nourishing ourselves with different meals, at different tables—even in different company, or perhaps terribly alone. But terribly alone on your own was always better than alone with each other—the TV punctuating the silence that hung between us, our laughter ringing out at the usual suspects: The Office, Seinfeld; we needed something light to take the edge off, you see, something for the night to make it more bright and less grim. We did the work, day in and day out, and the comedy kept us going—gave us the fuel to get up the next morning and do it all over again. But doing the same thing and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. Now, things would never be the same; it was a bell that couldn’t be un-rung.

I accomplished the task I set out to the moment the words came out of my mouth: “I want to get a divorce.” I really had to steel myself to say it, too; stretching our small talk and courteous check-ins to the very ends of their ropes, ‘til finally I had no choice—I simply had to come out with it. Everything after that was just for him. So it didn’t really matter how it went, what I got to say—or didn’t. I didn’t set out today to say anything, except that one little enormous thing—which carried with it such a weight you’d have thought we weighed the whole house for an estate sale. Who died anyways? We might as well have, if we’d had a house—but we didn’t. We had no such stable ground, no such concrete shelter from the storms of each other. We were closer to only having the clothes on our backs than really having anything at all.

We had a house—the one in which we used to watch comedy in the night to keep it light—but it was long gone now, gone with the wind, destroyed in a flurry; you’ll have to excuse me as I can hardly believe it still—that our place on Gemini no longer exists. Like it evaporated into thin air; left the air about it hanging something thick. I drove away from it one last time, my car packed to the brim at a quarter to five (yes, in the morning); we were supposed to be out the night before, but oh—how late we always were together. Like my period finally showing—eight days late—after our grand finale, the last time we were really together. Pregnant? No shot, I thought, counting the number of times we’d made love over the last few months on one hand—less, even. No—it was the stress and the confusion and the anxiety and the being alone, together. It was you saying this is for the better, but what felt like leaving me high and dry.

Sometimes it hurts so badly to think about how I gave you no chance at all. No choice in the matter, it was entirely my call. How I simply flipped a switch, chose a different path, started walking down it alone; didn’t even tell you I’d left. Like the time on Gemini you made me so mad I couldn’t contain myself from running out of the house, down the street, and another, and another, crossing a road until I was finally in the woods. And how I sat there alone, as the trees tempered down the last gleams of winter sunlight, down on my knees on the ground as early evening turned to twilight, whimpering between sobs and prayers and screams, my face in the dirt—blowing my nose into leaves, ‘cause I hadn’t exactly planned my leave. I wanted you to care but could feel how you didn’t. I wanted to die out there but instead I went home with my tail between my legs and we had dinner on your Grandmother’s Italian plateware and watched Seinfeld on the couch and finally crawled up to bed wondering why our heads must always be so full of disdain, resistance, pain.

I’ve come to believe it was simply because we were together. And we should have been, when we were. But towards the end—it got dicey. Sometimes I wonder if the icy chill of your presence or my own negligence was simply the universe’s way of separating us. We clung so hard to each other—to the life we chose to share together, to the dreams we invented in the wildest reaches of our minds that came to define us—we needed something big to shake us down, get a grip.

Maybe my point on the phone call wasn’t lost beyond being interrupted, ‘cause I had nothing to say beyond what I said; and explaining or justifying my statement would’ve been reaching. No, we needed the seasons: spring, summer, autumn and winter—in that order. I do think it’s fair to say we tried—countless nights and all the days since our lives intertwined. But I’ve realized: sometimes, choosing to stop trying, to stop doing the same thing that is clearly not working, rather than continuing on the same way and expecting different results—sometimes that is the hardest thing to do of all, the thing that takes the most strength, guts, courage and persistence. But I’ll just say, I think it’s fair to say we tried—and leave it at that.