People Tell Their Stories:
Family and Relationship Issues

Blessed Ruin: an Excerpt  dia
 
Everyone was surprised when I announced my engagement to David less than a year after we met, but not one person ever questioned the glossy certainty of my conviction. No one asked, "Dia, are you sure this is the right man for you?" It is very likely that I would have gone right ahead and married David anyway, but no one probed into my motives, or made the provocative observation, "Hmm, he's a lot like your father, isn't he?" I did not invite anyone to voice their doubts or attempt to unveil any of my own.
 
Being inscrutable was something I'd worked hard at for so long, that without even trying I managed to conceal the slightest hint of reservation, from myself and everyone else. After spending much of my youth being so cautious and fearful of the unknown, it gave me a deep thrill to catch myself so off guard, come what may. But David and I had never even had a fight. I loved David in that impetuous, devoted, inexhaustible, and unquestionable way.
 
I loved him still.
 
I was in love, but I was also miserable. I wasn't sure that I could rely on my perception of things, and it worried me that others, particularly my clients, entrusted me with the soft underbelly of their faith.
 
A couple I'd been seeing for a year and a half, who'd been together eight years, looked at me like wide-eyed skittish deer.
 
I said: How's it going?
 
She said: I think maybe...
 
He said: It's been an awful week.
 
She said: You never listen to me.
 
He said: You're always yelling at me.
 
She said: No I'm not!
 
He said: Yes, you are.
 
I said: You know, this sounds very familiar to me.
 
David and I separated. For almost a year we'd been driving over to Berkeley for our own couples therapy with Mary Ann. Perhaps we rushed into the marriage too quickly, but I took the commitment very seriously, and to heart. I made a firm decision not to give up on the union too hastily. In one of our sessions with Mary Ann I posed a simple question.
 
"What is it that you love about me, David? I really want to know, why did you marry me?"
 
Silence. I was trying to find some common positive ground for us to stand on. I saw this as a promising opening. I didn't at all like the fact that this question required so much thought.
 
"Well?" I prompted, trying not to visibly lean forward into the query. David remained quiet.
 
Mary Ann turned to me. "Dia, why don't you answer the question yourself first. What is it that you love about David?"
 
"Okay, fair enough." I gladly assumed the role of the obedient client and tucked my legs up under me in the chair.
 
"There's lots of things I love about you, David. I love that you make music, and how it makes you so happy when you're playing. I love that you can play so many different instruments." This wasn't hard to do. It was all true. I continued, "I love your beautiful hands, I love your cooking, I love your sleepy face in the morning. I love curling up in your arms. I love the way you laugh."
 
I could go on and on, but I stopped. I was sure that he would chime right in with an equally long list of my attractive qualities. "Your turn."
 
"I don't know what to say," he said.
 
I looked at Mary Ann, with one of those looks I'd seen plenty of times in my own office, begging her to take my side, and quick. This gap in conversation was a mistake. It had to be. I wanted someone to fill it, and David was not taking his cue. I couldn't look at him. I kept my pleading focus on Mary Ann.
 
"So," she said at last, tipping her chin in his direction. "What about you?"
 
David took a deep thoughtful breath. It was the same breath he took just before starting a piece of music, reaching inside himself to the source of all the notes about to come forth. I could see that he was really searching for what to say. I used to think his unhurried sensitivity was so beautiful, the way he took time on a walk to lift heavy wet logs in search of newts, or how at the end of a movie as the credits were rolling, he might start to cry. Not anymore. I could hardly sit still waiting for him to just open his mouth and talk. Watching him concentrate made me twitch with frustration. Then he took another slow, deep breath.
 
Why was this, of all things, so hard for him to articulate? The seconds passed by like trucks chugging up a steep hill, weighted down with huge worn metal pipes, used up and empty.
 
Finally he spoke.
 
"I guess what I love about you, Dia, is the way that you love me."
 
With that single statement my breath twisted up tight like a wet towel choking me from the inside.
 
"That's it? You love how I love you?" I felt as if a huge hole in my gut was sucking the rest of my organs out of me. Mary Ann started to say something, but this time I raised the flat of my hand at her, keeping my eyes fixed on David. Whatever the outcome, I had to see this all the way through.
 
"You mean there's nothing in particular about me that you find lovable?"
 
"That's not why I married you," he said. "Not because you do this or that."
 
"I see." As the shock began to register my voice shriveled. I could not believe what he had just said, and yet the force of his words rang so undeniably true. An ocean of sadness was getting ready to sweep over the arid landscape of my weary expectations, but I was not alone. David was right there with me. I saw the same ocean reflected in his grey-blue eyes. I didn't expect to feel gratitude as I met his gaze, but the strong tonic of his honesty conjured up some mysterious alchemy of relief.
 
"Well," I began, feeling words rising up without knowing what was coming. A swirl of tears was waiting in some quiet pool, ready to spring but remaining still, making room for the words to pass through unencumbered.
 
"You know, I'm glad that you appreciate how I love you, because I have tried everything I know how to do to make you happy. But you know what, David? That's not enough for me."
 
"You're right," he said. "It isn't enough."
 
*
 
What I dreaded most, divorce, came to pass. It was not long before Christmas when the two of us sat down to sign the papers of dissolution after three years of marriage. We met at a small cafÈ in Pacific Heights that I'd not been to before, and never returned to again. We took a quiet table by the window. A slanting winter rain splattered on the glass outside. Two stacks of paper sat in front of us instead of plates, pens in our hands instead of forks. Our cups of tea were set off to the side, empty.
 
"You know," David said, "I was always afraid to stand up to you and really get angry because I thought you'd leave me."
 
His face was soft, tender like a boy's. He had on the grey v-neck wool sweater I loved. His long pale fingers held the edge of the table. It was all I could do not to reach for his hand.
 
"Maybe you should have risked it, David. I think it would've helped. As it is, we're splitting up anyway."
 
Our signatures were required in several places on both copies of the divorce papers. Each time one of us flipped a page and signed our name, I had the sense that all the plans we'd made together were being pulled up, one at a time, like the stakes of a tent and thrown aside. Our life housed as a couple was being folded up neatly, albeit amicably, to be put away in some irretrievable legal storage unit.
 
Nevertheless, things were anything but as they appeared. The loss I felt was real enough. The pain left a hollow I could not begin to wrap my arms around, but the empty ruin was not at all devastating. Quite the opposite. There was more to love, not less. That much I knew. Love was not limited to the quick buckling reflex of cynicism. The space unfurling between us was open, but nothing was lacking in the gaping expanse.
 
Perhaps because I'd been grieving for most of the time we were together, I didn't feel at all sad when the divorce was deemed final by The State of California six months later. I stopped by the Marin County Civil Court one warm June morning on my way to work and collected the stamped papers. By then David had moved to New Mexico.
 
When people asked me how I was doing adjusting back to my single status, I felt more than a little bit guilty saying, "Great. I'm doing great." To some I dared to add, "Never better, in fact." I didn't fully understand this reaction myself. More than anything, I had wanted the marriage to endure. Yet now that it was over, I felt endowed with a sense of well-being I couldn't begin to describe, let alone justify.
 
Not long after I had a dream.
 
I am at the beach standing with my feet in the surf. An enormous tidal wave is rolling in toward the shore. It is a hundred feet high, at least, gloriously imminent and powerful. I notice a cement wall nearby, and go to stand behind it for protection. As soon as I position myself behind the wall I have the sudden awareness that once the wave hits, my body will be swept up and lashed back, slammed hard into the concrete. It is too late, however, to move back. To move at all. Besides, there is no where to go. I feel completely lucid and calm. I just wish I could drown without the anticipated physical pain. The wave comes. I am enveloped in deep watery silence. I wait for the moment when my body will smack against the wall. I wait, but the moment does not come. I am simply floating in the full embrace of the ocean. There is absolutely no sense of any resistance or fear.
 
I wake. Still floating. I open my eyes, awash in this vast sea of incomparable repose.

|  Family and Relationship Issues  |  People Tell Their Stories  |