Husband
January 10, 2020
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This past weekend we took on the monumental task of cleaning out our storage facility. A lifetime’s worth of “stuff” piled into a 10×10 space that we’ve been renting for $170 dollars a month. With gas prices pushing $5/gallon, it was time to think hard about eliminating unnecessary expenses.
These types of clean up projects have always been stressful. The more I dig through old boxes, the more I realize how much waste I’ve accumulated over the years. I was ashamed to find dresses still with tags on them, and no memory of when or why I’d purchased them. Such terrible materialism.
However, nothing could prepare me for how I’d feel when I found furniture, cutlery and household items from my past life. Life before London. Life before my 24-year-old world fell apart.
You see, I’m a divorcee. Or as close to it as I could be at this point in my life. I had a life with a man for six years. We were high school sweet hearts. We moved in together. We had a baby dog. Someday, we were going to have our happily ever after.
And then suddenly, everything changed. Happily ever after was no longer possible. I was heartbroken.
Bags were packed, the lease was broken and the long, drawn-out, damaging goodbye began. I left for London to start anew and quickly shoved all remnants of that life into tightly sealed boxes never to be opened again.
Until this weekend.
It was like a cruel version of Christmas morning. Boxes and boxes of memories, impossible to know whether good or bad. Childhood photographs! Favourite stuffed animals! Old books! Our kitchen cutlery…
I donated the couch, pots and pans, electronics and appliances to my parents. It made no sense keeping perfectly good things in boxes to gather dust. But as we laid out all the pieces of my old apartment, I couldn’t help but remember that I once had the grown-up life that I’m slowly beginning to long for again. I actually owned my own furniture! I actually invested in non-IKEA kitchenware. I had purchased my first flat screen TV. I was a grown-up in that past life. A house-making, nest-building adult!
As I sat there arranging the familiar pillows and unwrapping old tea sets, I couldn’t help but cry. This is what it must feel like to go through a divorce. I have no ill feelings towards him but wow, how sad that a peaceful life could change so quickly. I don’t miss him at all, but wow, how terrible a feeling it is to have failed so monumentally at a relationship. I don’t miss that life anymore, but still, it was my life for over half a decade. I cried not from regret but because I needed to properly, finally mourn. It was a sadness purge several years in the making.
This past weekend I visited ghosts. The same ghosts I pushed into the back of the closet, hoping they’d disappear. Sometimes, it takes purposeful courage to open that closet door and look them straight in the eye. Exorcism, closure, freedom.
I recently signed up for a 10-week creative writing course and have been loving it! Today’s post is an excerpt from last week’s assignment. The task: to write about a season in the context of place. This piece was inspired by my time living in Bali early last year.
There is a faint musk in the air as I get out of bed and open the curtains to the bright green rice paddies just outside my balcony. It’s 9 am in Ubud and the night’s AC has me shivering in the morning light of my white tiled bungalow just off Monkey Forest Road. I am both giddy and stressed that the day’s itinerary is, yet again, uncharted. I don my regular attire: a green bikini, a black tank top and a floral sarong. A smearing of coconut scented sunscreen on my face and I’m out the door.
The ground, still moist from the night’s rain, shimmers as I scamper down the stairs into the steamy sunlight. It’s going to be a hot one. I can feel it. The crickets, quieter now, buzz a lazy greeting as I rush through the lush, wet courtyard still dripping with dew. Oh the pure pleasure on my body as the moist morning weaves its way through every membrane of my clothing. Already, everything feels damp with a day’s worth of walking. I grin with guilt as Asia’s sweaty breath makes it’s way down my cheek, across my neck, and around my shoulders, arms and legs. This must be the reason couples head to the tropics on honeymoon. Already, we are making love, Ubud and I, and it isn’t even noon.
The sun is different here. It kisses and burns. I shiver in the heat, condensation quickly forming on my temples. I pull my hair into a high ponytail as I greet the bungalow manager goodbye across the open air lobby and into the street. Like stepping off the plane in Cairo, Bali also smells third world: a hint of open sewer, over-ripened fruit, wet moss and damp wood. Mopeds whizz by as shop keepers sweep the night’s rubbish from their front steps.
I’m a local here, or so they think. They greet me with a passing glance, like we share a secret that I am supposed to know. I am not the blond haired, blue-eyed American who can be weaseled into paying too much for a sun hat. I am Indonesian, or I could be, and so, I’m not worth the effort to harass.
Pretending to be a local here and getting away with it is a simple pleasure that overcomes me each morning as I walk to breakfast. It’s as if Ubud has always been mine; the thick jungles and bamboo bungalows so much a part of my blood, Southeast Asia pumping in through my veins. It is familiar and exotic at once, the dichotomy so intoxicating, I just might never leave.
