A friend of mine got divorced after giving up the booze and told me he only realized how boring his marriage was once he was sober. It was funny … in a tragic kind of way. More so when I realized the same thing quite possibly happened to me. Sure, the problems were already finding the cracks … like dust and water, they search them out … and once a crack is found, its permanence is solidified. I cleansed my life through the Art of Living, a course in breathing and meditation that partners of my friends steered them away from on suspicions that some of the lesser-known side-effects included a freezer devoid of meat products, a liquor cabinet full of sparkling water, way too much energy at 4am and … well, in my case … separation. I sobered up, scraped out the cracks, and my marriage was over in less than a year.
“You’re staying in a dysfunctional relationship, so you can use the problems you have with your husband as a layer to prevent you from dealing with the real issues within yourself that you are too afraid to confront.” I was talking yesterday to my ‘twin’ … my spirit friend and soul mate. I see her visibly cloud over when her husband enters the room and she shrinks from catwalk model to hobbit. “You can only truly unmask the magnificence of the person you’re meant to be once you’re free of him.” But no sooner were the words out of my mouth than I realized that perhaps this was purely a very valid projection of something I had come out of and that, due to our uncanny synchronicity, she was just entering into. One can also not completely overlook my new obsession with freedom.
It took me thirteen years of marriage to figure out that marriage was quite possibly the worst thing for me … a sentiment condemned in couples counselling, yet confirmed last week by a palm reading (yes, yes, ok, I also take guidance from the planets and my cycle is linked to the moon …). Apparently, I’ll Do Anything For Love. It’s written in the way my thumb bends right back. My little finger stands out from the others, claiming I push attachment away. But my love (index) finger stands stuck to my middle finger, defiantly standing up for the fact that I am just better with a mate. “Sigh.” I’m apparently incredibly creative, see beauty in everything, and am ruled by fate … But I digress.
The interesting part – and where I’m really going with this – is that, according to a little padded area, I have a sense that I will never get all I want from just one man. “You need several at one time?” an astonished friend proclaimed. Oh yeah! Apparently … and interesting considering I have recently been marketing the idea that every woman needs to find her own Holy Trinity – Three Men who jointly satisfy all her Needs, Dreams and Desires. I kinda had it figured out at the beginning of the year when I was embracing my freedom, satisfied that I had made no commitments to any one person and I was, therefore, free to play. I had found my pretty young thing who made me feel like a teenager … having a Sandra Dee holiday romance. I had an intellectual attraction to an awesome mind who also inspired in me a kind of spiritual awakening. And I had this magnificent big man who sent electric shocks through my body just by sending me an sms … and fifteen a day was something like electric shock therapy.
When I get a picture of my husband in my mind, what I see is hundreds of hands trying to box me in, constrain me and gag me … and not in a good way. But my pathology at the time demanded it be that way … for reasons that are only now becoming clear. So, unlike my ‘twin’, I bailed out of the marriage that was hindering the path to my own recovery and I am still now unwrapping the layers of my pathology. With unveiled beauty, I continue to embrace the freedom from my marriage. But another Holy Trinity? Not so sure … as tempting as it sounds, it kinda goes against the Single and unComplicated bliss that somehow sounds even more so.
Perhaps, if I concentrate really hard, I can get the swelling on my palm to go down and prise my love finger and my middle fingers apart. And then maybe – just maybe – my thumb will even stand up straight.
