long quiet river

I could wait for the dust to settle, for more leaves to fall. Or, I could write this raw. What strikes me, as I write long-hand, is that even after receiving last night’s text from my ex, telling me he was in a new relationship, I went on sitting cross-legged on the floor, before my laptop, determined to press Send on a blog post (not this one) before bed. I didn’t fall in a heap with tissues, is what I mean. I kept on going. I went on being me.

Where else was there to go?

I had a hunch something was up with my ex when I didn’t hear from him for a few months, even after I included him in some newsy emails to his family. To be fair, he did thank me for these. He just didn’t reciprocate. And because he keeps in touch with our kids by phone, with a few stray details seeping through to me, and never the ones I want, prior to this text I knew little about what was happening in his life, except that he was traveling a lot.

I stared into space, dazed that a couple of paragraphs in a text could carry so much weight, so much change. Then my mind started up. What further proof could I possibly need, that I was my ex’s first wife and no more, than that he’d transferred his love to another woman?

And not just any woman.

‘You didn’t Google her?’ asked my daughter, fake shocked, when I told her the next morning that M, her father’s new partner, was attractive and successful in her own right.

It’s up to me how I tell this story. I could go down the woe is me path, which is there for the taking. I could explain that M is younger and more entrepreneurial than I’ll ever be (and that my ex once encouraged me to be). I could be bitchy and tell you that, living in the country she does, she almost certainly has someone to do for her domestically, and that she’s taken more business class flights than I’ve taught yoga classes. But that would be, well, bitchy. Like scratching an itch, it would be the work of a moment, changing nothing. The reality, harder to wrap my head around, is that my ex’s life is now his own. And, with this relationship, it’s moved on in a way that even he, daydreaming aside, couldn’t have foreseen.

I can, if I choose, frame my ex’s news as a rebuke. I can see it as my ex being drawn, in a twist of fate, to a woman who on the surface is everything I’m not. But I’m trying not to do this, to not go there. Because beneath my hurt, and beyond my wounded ego, there might be a better interpretation than the easy Cinderella one. I can, if I choose, take this news as confirmation of the fraction of my life that I can actually control, have ever controlled. (After all, I’ve never been able to make anyone love me.) I can, if I choose, refuse to give way to panic and wait for the emotional rip that I’m in to release me into calmer waters.

Three years before I married, I called off my wedding. Why? I called it off because my ex called me provincial at the end of an argument about laundry. Being called provincial, by someone who studied at Oxford, was not a compliment. It was code for being small-minded, modest and non-aspirational. Which is why, in that moment, I thought better of marrying someone who thought of me in this light, so and called off the wedding. (We married, happily and with eyes open, three years later.)

Now that my ex is in a relationship with a woman who, on the surface, possesses qualities I lack, I find myself feeling provincial all over again. Is living in Hobart, teaching yoga, and looking after a big property something to be proud of or ashamed of? Does it stack up, or will I live to regret my choices (which, if they ever were choices, don’t feel like it now)? Will I spend my life caring about things that can never lead to success and power, or will I breathe through the feeling currently enveloping me, that my life has turned into a BBC screenplay, and come to rest on solid ground? It’s hard not to give in to my inner nine-year-old, who right now is stamping her feet and pointing out the unfairness of the fact that, next weekend, I’ll be in my home town for my godmother’s big birthday, while my ex returns from holiday in Marseilles with a woman whose voice on the phone sounds warm and friendly.

For a ridiculous number of years, I cooked for my ex. Whenever he was sick, and often when he was well, I would squeeze him orange juice. Earlier today, my daughter mentioned in passing that while she was on the phone to her father, M handed him a plate of cut orange. When my daughter told me this, I felt furious. But also reassured. Perhaps, I thought, M will encourage my ex to look after himself by modeling good health to him, rather than, as I resorted to, prodding him in vain.

When, the next day, I asked my ex a follow-up question, ‘Does M have kids?’ he said that she hadn’t, but that she loved cats. I felt surprise and relief. Then, in a whisker, I had this wicked thought. I thought that, not having had kids, M had been spared from being broken from within by the impossible love that I feel for my kids, of wanting the best for them, while also knowing this can only be theirs to the degree I stay out of their heads and their path. And this, I thought darkly, was why M looked so young and intact on Google.

In June, four years will have passed since my marriage ended. That moment feels like yesterday. Yet also not. Four years is a proper chunk of time. The same night that I received my ex’s text, I had this dream. I dreamed that my ex had organised a birthday dinner for thirty people, not including me, at a nice hotel in the city. It was early evening and, in the dream, I was in the foyer as people started to arrive. Clearly, I needed to leave. Just then, a text came up on my phone. My dog had got out and was roaming the streets, and I was needed to help look for him. My dog never roams the streets and has no road sense. But rather than feel worried, I felt annoyed. Why should I have the job of hunting for a dog while the real thing, my ex’s big dinner, was happening without me, despite me?

Next morning, as I mulled over the dream after yoga class, I realised that it was only on the surface a Cinderella dream. At least, it wasn’t only a Cinderella dream. The dream also told me that, in my unconscious, I was more attached to my yellow Labrador than to my ex, which felt both shocking and consoling. My other association to this dream was to a French film that I saw twice in London, called Life is a Long Quiet River. I loved this film title. Somehow it captured the film, set in the country and containing no big dramas and numerous characters, so well.

Not for a second did I imagine that my own life might one day feel like a long quiet river. Not splashy and impressive, but modest and, yes, provincial. It didn’t occur to me, back then, that the reason this French film resonated was that, in my unconscious, I longed not for bright lights and a big job, but for a life that flowed like a long quiet river. My ex had been right, damn it, all those years ago. I was provincial, still am. Then as now, I loved the small moments. I liked seeing green through the window. I liked weekday walks on beaches. Then as now, I was emotionally incapable of not being around for my kids. Besides which, I hated stress, still do. I never wanted to do what it takes to pay for a seat at the front of the plane.

When I’m feeling truly bitchy, I view my marriage as a sunk cost. I look back at it, feel confused, and think, ‘What was that all about?’ Thankfully, I’m rarely truly bitchy. Instead I’ve come to a different conclusion, which was always there for the taking. And so I have tattooed, to the inside of my forehead where no-one but me can see, the interpretation I like better, which is that just because a relationship ends doesn’t mean it failed.