From The Files Of: 'Almost Divorced' & 'The Potential & Inevitable Complications of a Day.'

Marriages, Anniversaries, Divorces, Endings, Beginnings. And, the occasional vaginal suppository. Of course.

Today is my anniversary.

At least it was, when I started this note. It’s no longer. The in-depth scared me shitless to write stuff is after the paywall- just a heads up.

The only sentence I got down though, on Sunday-the actual anniversary of my only wedding (so far, that is) in 2010 was: Today is my anniversary.

I am no longer with my husband, yet we are not yet legally divorced. YET.

Refrain (restrain?) from asking me questions, or, if you feel you must ask questions,¹ make sure they are the right ones.

We live in the in between place and if we are not mindful, we fall back into the old place.

Both places are untraceable on a GPS system. Both are located in the home that we still share. The home that I bought.  

My (current) partner- lovingly and thoughtfully- built me an easel for my newfound painting obsession. He is a woodworker, among many other labels like: photographer, actor, fixer of things.

Last week, I knocked it over and it broke. The sound it made loud was enough for even my deaf ears to register. It was like one lone drum beat waiting for it’s echo to reply back in turn.

I had the audacity (good sense?) to ask my ex if he might be able to fix it.

He did.²

(There are lots of footnotes in this, and in my nextx book. I can’t tell you what to do but I can ask. For example: read them? I just asked.)

He fixed the easel in our driveway. The driveway of the home we both still live in as cordial roommates might. Or, like amicable exes might exist if they had to keep sharing the kitchen sink. Like exes who maybe realize- albeit not suddenly-at least not for me- that the dynamic within the home now is no different than it was during their marriage, but who don’t dare talk about that because it would feel too sad, or too obvious.

He kneeled on pavement and hammered. It began to drizzle.

I stared at my ex, crouched over broken wood, as he fixed my beloved apparatus and I thought of the percussion of sound.

Constraint, restraint, restrain, strain, rain, pain. Gain. Ain’t. rainpain.

He stood the easel back up, fully repaired. I finished painting my partner’s face there in the garage, as my ex-husband- but not really ex-husband, not yet- puttered nearby.

I did not possess enough restraint to hold off painting my lover.

(Or would it be restrain? As in: I could not restrain?)

Can I retrain myself?

Or maybe train, for the first time ever. There is no re aspect to it. No again. This one is a never before, never again relationship.³

Lover is one of those words that gives me chills with its pretentiousness, with its spacious vagueness to mean so many things, and yet, what else do I call him? Partner? Best friend? Muse? Argument buddy? Everything? My everything? Fiancé?

Yet without context, those labels hang in the air, confused as to where they belong, as is the case with all labels, I suppose.

Anyway, who are labels for?⁴

I had an impulse and so I followed it out to my garage. That’s where I make my art.

I made my way to my table of spilled paints and powders and Legos (yes, I use whatever I find- much like I cook and write) and brushes and capless markers gone dry. (Capless Markers Gone Dry is a great band name or book title, fyi.)

I had an impulse to conjure my fiancé for comfort on a complicated day.⁵

Impossibly Good Sneering

I began to paint his face on top of an older painting of mine that I wasn’t thrilled with, building upon the layers of what was already there.

For inspiration, I used an image of him from a New York Times article, where is hand rests on his beautifully serious face. The headline says His Mission: Impossibly Good Sneering, which they could have come up with after looking at the photo and noticing his expression or, they could have suggested to him what they wanted him to do with his eyes, with his fingers.

I was there during the interview, blushing and hiding my face when he spoke of me (they omitted that part in the paper), but I was not at the photo shoot, so I can’t say.