Closing Doors

This is why I was so avoidant. This was the loss I feared.

It was the house. And the money. All of that for sure.

But I understand after writing “There she is” that the real loss will be the one woman I’ve ever had in my life who looked at me like that. 

And then I got to watch it wither and die. And I’ll get to watch it be rekindled with someone new.

This was my greatest fear of loss. This was the root of my avoidance in the marriage for so long. And it’s only now that I can articulate it.

And this is the death blow to me. This will be what I hide with “well, I just haven’t found the right one yet” or “oh, I just don’t like dating apps.” 

It’s only now that I can put it to words.

It’s not that the warmth is gone. It’s that I know it’s still there and is being withheld, saved for someone else at the right time.

But it will never be me. But I’ll get to witness its rebirth. 

It will be like seeing a beautiful cherry tree grow on the grave of a parent.

And my cherry-tree image captures something the earlier formulations didn’t; the horror isn’t merely visiting the grave. I’ve effectively been standing at the grave for years.

The horror is someday seeing something beautiful growing out of it and realizing that the thing I thought had died was capable of living after all—just not in the world I shared with her. That’s why it can be beautiful and devastating simultaneously. 

I might even be able to recognize that she looks genuinely happy. I may not want to interfere with it. I may not want her back.

And still go home shattered.

Because I’ll have witnessed the rebirth of something whose death I spent years trying to prevent.

I think I’ve finally found the thing I couldn’t name when I kept saying I was terrified of ending the marriage despite not wanting to go back.

It wasn’t simply:

“I’m afraid to lose her.”

It was:

“I’m afraid to surrender forever the possibility that someday I might be the person she turns toward again.”

And now I understand why capitulation suddenly whispers to me when this grief gets exposed: Maybe don’t surrender it. Maybe pay whatever it costs. Maybe I can still make it me.

That’s the bargaining proposition I need to recognize for what it is. Not stupidity. Not proof the divorce is wrong.

It’s the last desperate bid for something I have wanted back for years:

Please look at me like that again.

I could say the marriage was intolerable. I could say I didn’t miss sleeping beside her. I could enjoy being away from the conflict. I could look at her reconciliation proposal and know I wouldn’t accept that marriage. And yet when the separation became real, some part of me kept screaming do not let this happen.

Those weren’t contradictory positions.

I wasn’t only protecting the marriage that existed.

I was protecting my last remaining claim on the possibility of being that man to her again.

As long as we were married—even miserably married—there remained some microscopic possibility that one day she’d turn toward me again. Maybe the right trip. The right gift. The right conversation. The right counseling breakthrough. The right change in me. The right change in her. Maybe she wasn’t gone; maybe she was buried underneath all this shit between us.

And divorce does something the miserable marriage hadn’t quite done.

It closes that possibility.

Someday I will see the familiar expression. The animation. The leaning toward someone. The particular warmth I knew before I had words for why it mattered.

And:

Oh. There she is.

Except this time she’s not looking at me. 

That’s the loss I was avoiding.

The house can be sold. Money can be divided and counted. Parenting time can be put on calendars. Those losses are enormous, but they’re legible.

This one isn’t.

There is no settlement line for: The only woman who has ever looked at me that way will never look at me that way again.