Anxious

Thanks to you all I have a long list of things to read, and an even longer list of potential book topics for this website (once a month or so shall we talk about books?  I swear to god, some kind of format in which I can talk about books, recommend books, hear about new books, AND be bossy (in that I will be the one driving the discourse) is my idea of absolute heaven.  I only ask that you tell me if you actually read any of the things I recommend.  I think there is no better feeling than telling someone about a book you have read and loved, and then having that person read it and report back to you what he or she thought.  So.  Are you game?)

However, I have still not decided what reading material to bring on my trip.  I am flying on a very severe airline, whose rules prohibit even overhead baggage (unless one pays extra, which I will not.)  I probably can only bring two, maybe three books (this is terrible) and even though I have strictly instructed my mother (who understands about these matters) to bring only books I have not read AND am guaranteed to like, my former bookless experiences continue to haunt.  Beckett and Nietzsche and nothing else when one has dysentery?  Have you ever had such a thing happen to you?  It is not easily forgotten.

Anxiety about choosing the right books is, actually, the least of my worries right now.  For unknown reasons, I have lately been rather a basket case.  I am nervous about the weather and about my flights, which is ridiculous.  I have never worried about weather or flights, not even when traveling long distances with babies and plane-phobic husbands and dogs in crates in the hold.  I am nervous about leaving the children with the au pair, who has been rather astoundingly incompetent lately.  I am nervous about leaving in general, which is preposterous.  I’m nervous about the things I need to accomplish before I leave, and nervous about the things I will need to accomplish when I get back. I am, truth be told, an absolute bundle of nerves, from the moment I wake (when I promptly pull the covers over my head and lie as still as I can, stomach churning, afraid to get up even though I know that getting up is the first, necessary step toward snapping out of panic and into routine) until the moment I go to sleep.

One can always blame Winter. The cold and the dark and the snow, yes, but also the flashbacks to the last several grim Winters of Divorce.  The first crisis that precipitated the end of the marriage occurred in January five years ago, and it was almost exactly three years ago that we told the kids we were splitting up.  But that seems rather lame, since there were plenty of horrible events in spring, summer and fall.  And besides, I don’t want to be counting “two years since this, four years since that” for the rest of my goddamned life, as if the divorce were the defining event, my own personal Year Zero.  I’d like to start looking forward instead of always looking back.  So let’s not blame the season.

Though I’ll tell you what, writing about the separation on the Babble site has been much harder than I thought.  “So don’t write about it any more,” my mother has said, implying that I am Dwelling on the Unpleasant.  It’s true that trying to tell the story in a cogent, fair, comprehensive way unsettles me in a way I don’t quite understand.  It’s not that I am afraid to talk about the divorce, or think about it.  I write in my journal and I continue to bore the shit out of my poor friends with my tedious unpacking of various events.  But the Babble story catapults me right back to an unpleasant emotional state, a general feeling of precariousness, as if I’m reliving the dread and drama that dominated our lives for months and months and months.  I’m also perpetually anxious that I’m telling the story wrong.  Or maybe it’s that I can see, from the distance of a few years, just how desperately I was winging it back then.  You’d think there would be catharsis, or at the very least a happy feeling of “Good grief, how lucky I am to have gotten THAT over with,” each time I write another installment…but no.  I think I may ditch the straight chronological narrative before too long, but for now, there’s another post up.

If you have comments about divorce mediation–mediations that worked, those that did not, other ideas–please leave them over there. I have lots of ideas about why ours did not work–I will write more about that later on–but I also have a nagging suspicion that mediation might not be the best way to dismantle a marriage. This may be heresy to many of you. It seemed like heresy to ME, too, until I found out about collaborative divorce.

Oh, and the people who looked at the house aren’t really interested (I finally emailed to ask what was up.) I am thinking I will hang on to it for at least another year. It seems ridiculous to sell at the nadir of the market, and if I can find a tenant for the guest bedroom, I should be able to stay solvent. And holy mother of god, I honestly don’t know if I have it in me to deal with trying to sell it again. Just that one day–the cleaning, the fretting, the high hopes and the inevitable letdown–put me in a horrible mood that has persisted ever since. So unless someone appears on the doorstep with a suitcase of money and offers to take the place As Is, I think we’re officially staying put for now. The kids, once I get around to telling them, will be thrilled.