2019-02-10 | Victoria
We will miss her, Earth, when she turns on us, when her air and soil and water become poison to us, when we move on to other orbits and other planets. Likely we will sit around in our underground bunkers on Mars as terraforming processes rumble on above our heads, making this new planet over in the image of Earth when she was young and pliable and ripe, and wonder what she’s doing, back in the old orbit, and miss all the things that she did for us, the ways she provided for us, the ways that she was so good to us until she wasn’t, until she lost it, until she outgrew us, until she changed, so suddenly, so inexplicably. We will miss her as she was, we will lament that it didn’t work out between us.
But she will not miss us.
My ex-husband was a gorgeous man, thin as a whip, with red-blonde hair and sharp cheekbones. He wore fitted button-downs, fitted jeans. Tattoos peeked tastefully out of the bottom of rolled-up sleeves. He would never believe that he was beautiful, though, was always self-conscious about his body. I had to tell him, over and over and over again how much I loved to look at him, while he told me that he didn’t deserve me, that he had assumed in high school that he would never get to sleep with anyone, and especially not someone as beautiful as me.
I was so nervous on our first date that I barely spoke. I had gone on so many first dates in the six months before I met him that I had gotten comfortable with them, that they had become almost routine. With him I was off-balance from the first, desperate for this beautiful, accomplished, well-dressed man to like me. He was five years older than me, and swore, when he took me to a bar and found out that I couldn’t drink, that he hadn’t noticed the age on my dating profile.
He told me, later, that he knew on our first date that he wanted to marry me. I could never understand what he saw in that near-mute to make him want to spend the rest of his life with her. Maybe, I thought, he can just see me more clearly than everyone else does. I don’t even have to tell him; he just knows. Like magic. Like love.
I see a little more clearly, nowadays.
Earth thought we were charming at first, too. How smart, how ingenious these evolved apes had become. Look at the art they made, the way they investigated her, understood her, saw her. Look at the ways they related to each other, the ways they loved each other. Look at how they fought over her, how they loved her so much that they spilled their blood for her, laid down their lives. Look how much they cared.
He worked constantly, work phone always in his pocket, always ringing. He told me on our first date that unless he was on vacation he would always have his work phone on him, and that he would always answer it. People relied on him, on his expertise. He had to be available to them. I admired his importance for a long time before I began to resent the fact that we would never have a date that wasn’t interrupted by a phone call from work, before I realized that I could parrot the company line of a company I’d never worked for word for word because he said it so often in my presence.
I was stressed, constantly, by the fact that any room that he was in would come to feel like an office (his office) in time. But then I imagined how stressed he must feel, to be working constantly, to be so in demand, so needed. And so I took care of him. I took my stress and turned it into work, into caring, I tried to wrap myself around him and protect him, tried to take what weights I could from his shoulders. After all, my job had sane hours, my job had weekends guaranteed, my job never called me when I wasn’t on the clock. I was lucky, and didn’t that mean I was obligated to take care of him, my poor, less fortunate mate?
I had promised myself, before I ever started dating, that I wouldn’t fall into the trap of doing all the housework for some man. I was strong, I was bold, and my parents had taught me that I should not just do what some man said. I was my own person. But this was different, of course. This wasn’t some man, this was my person, my love. This wasn’t falling into stereotypes, this was taking care of a person who needed it. This was being kind. This wasn’t forever, either; this was just until he got promoted once or twice and could relax on his laurels. He promised.
Of course, when I was falling over tired because I had taken on all the responsibility in the relationship, when I asked for help - he said that I reminded him of his mother (she broke his collarbone once) and left it at that. I learned that asking for help only ever hurt him, and never got me any help.
When first we delved beneath her skin, did it hurt? Did she think, well, if you just need a little, go ahead. It’s not comfortable, but I can survive it. You are such little things, and you deserve my care, by body, anything that I can give you. It’s worth it, after all, to see you make such clever (terrible) things. After all, at first, we probably asked for permission before and gave thanks afterwards for her wonderful gifts.
What did she think when we delved ever deeper, and forgot to ask, forgot to be grateful for all that she provided, all the parts of her that we excised from her and carried away for our own purposes? What did she think when we cut down her trees, dug up her grasslands, and cut ourselves off from her right on top of what used to be her living landscapes?
My ex-husband liked hiking, the one time he tried it with me. He had been hiking before, when he was small; he had lived all over the country before he turned eighteen, but had done most of his growing up in Indiana, where his parent’s marriage had been falling apart and he had spent most of his time avoiding the churning storm of his family home. Some of that time had been spent learning to work on cars, some had been spent playing video games in his room for ten hours at a time, and some of it had been spent on church camping trips. He told me, on that one time that I managed to lure him out into the forested hills of New Jersey, that he knew how to start a fire without matches, that he had loved sleeping in the woods, that he wished we could camp in the real way someday, not the pedestrian car-camping that I had grown up with, but something wilder, more survivalist, more challenging.
Thrilled that I had gotten him out into the hills and woods that I was desperately tired of exploring alone, I enthused about the prospect. O, that he should deign to teach me ways to survive that were better than the ones my parents had taught me, that he should be the wise elder and I the naïve student in the woods that I had been walking on my own most weekends, until I knew them like the back of my hand. It would be such an adventure, and maybe, finally, it would be the thing that would knit the braid of the two of us back together in the places where I could feel us unraveling. When we got back to the apartment, I started to research what we would need for a camping trip, where the closest campsite was, what a couple nights would cost.
When I came to him to tell him my findings, he interrupted me to ask what we were having for dinner. We never did go camping, though two humid summers and two glorious falls were left in our doomed marriage. I knew at the time that I had pushed too hard, that I had been too much, that I had screwed up this opportunity for us to reconnect. I wonder, now, if he wasn’t more interested in being the authority in our marriage than he was in spending time with me. His tragedy, then, that his type was smart girls, and that they (we) inevitably became wise women.
She tried to tell us that we were hurting her; she tried to ask us to stop. Temperatures climbed, coral reefs bleached, fires blazed, storms raged, animals died off one by one. Scientists, environmentalists (her priests, her acolytes) relayed her messages to us, tried to tell us what we needed to change. You can’t say that we didn’t know, that we didn’t hear, that we didn’t see. At first, maybe, when she was whispering, maybe then you could say you didn’t know - but she screamed before the end, on every frequency available to her, begging us to stop. We just wanted everything she could give more than we wanted to return the care she had given to us.
Some of us shouted back that she was making us feel bad, so could she please stop? Some of us called her selfish, irrational, and immature. Some of us covered our ears, and denied that we had heard her at all.
I told him I wanted a divorce three times before it stuck, but it was me asking him to open our marriage that was the death-knell, though I’m not surprised he didn’t see it. I was careful, by then. I didn’t tell him I was thinking about leaving him, I didn’t tell him that I was dissatisfied, that the last time I had driven into Philly to visit friends that we had discussed the viability of my marriage for hours. I knew, without being able to put it into so many words, that if I told him that I wanted more that he would say he didn’t understand, that he would make excuses, that he would tell me just to wait a little longer, that he would castigate himself until I felt sorry for him and told him that he had done nothing wrong, or, if I held my ground that he would shut down and walk out and not return for an hour, or two, or three, until I was worried about where he had gone and would welcome him home with open arms. I remembered the fight, years ago, when I had suggested that he should divorce me because I wasn’t good enough for him, and he had punched the headboard on my side of the bed so hard that it splintered and broke and was never whole again. I remembered that he told me that the next time I brought up divorce in his presence, I had better be ready to follow through on the threat. And I wasn’t ready to, yet. So I kept my counsel and kept my silence and proposed that we both be able to date other people.
Things crashed and burned in the course of a single year.
He met another smart girl, ten years older than me, divorced, a single mother working on getting her masters. These are the things he told me about her: she was barely making ends meet, she struggled with her mental health, she asked his advice on every decision she made and followed it without question. She came from a broken home, too, also had an abusive past, and so she understood him in ways that I couldn’t. He could tell her things that he could never tell me because I had come from a happy home, because he had to protect me. He could tell her how he felt (I had been begging him to tell me what he was feeling for years). He knew that he wanted to have her in his life for the rest of his life on the first date (Sound familiar?). She liked Nietsche and Phillip K. Dick and Rick and Morty and they were going to drop acid together, just once, and change their lives. With her he didn’t have to fight over feminism, with her he didn’t have to remember who Ursula K. LeGuin was. (Ok, with that last one I’m just extrapolating.)
I met her once, and god was she sharp and beautiful and well-dressed. Clever and charming. Well-read. “Isn’t she amazing? Isn’t she gorgeous?” he asked me. I agreed. She was me in a funhouse mirror, me with a different color palette and different hair.
I don’t know her; I don’t know how much of what he said was true and how much of this was his fantasy of her, his explanation for why he spent so much time with her, why he couldn’t resist when she extended an invitation. Were her politics actually more accomodating? Did she actually only like the things he liked? Was she actually that much easier to get along with? Or was he infatuated? Was he seeing what he wanted to see?
Was he putting her on a pedestal so that I would know how I needed to act if I wanted to keep his attention? I can speculate, but I can never know. I can’t hate her; after all, he’s her problem now.
They said “I love you” on the second date. He told me three weeks later, on our date night, in public, because he was afraid I would overreact. I didn’t know where he had gotten that impression, where he had learned to be afraid of me, but I resolved to be quieter, to keep my emotions under tighter control.
He didn’t use a condom because he trusted her, because she asked him not to, because I hadn’t been specific enough when I asked for safer sex practices. My fault, my mistake. I found out when I developed symptoms that necessitated a visit to a doctor. I got a lecture from my gynecologist; I asked him for a divorce for the first time.
He swore he would change. He swore she would get tested. He swore he would wait to have sex with me until I felt comfortable again. He could afford to; he was still having sex with her as often as she would let him. He waited one week before telling me that I was traumatizing him, reminding him of his abusive childhood, by withholding sex.
How exhausted do you think she was, before the end? How many times had she begged? How many times had we promised to change? How long until she stopped believing us? Before she gave us that final ultimatum: leave or die.
How much did it hurt her? How much did she blame herself for not being able to get through to us? How selfish did she feel, throwing a whole sentient species who needed her out of their one, their only home?
And yet, she knew, maybe the one, the only thing she still trusted, that she couldn’t keep on as she was. That stone by stone and promise by promise we were destroying her.
How much did she hold back? Enough, clearly, for some of us to make it off-planet. Enough for us to think that maybe, someday, we might have a chance of going back. Enough that we radio back, sometimes, asking if we can still be friends.
I think sometimes she wishes she had it in her to hurl a couple of asteroids at Mars.
Eight months. Eight months. Eight months. They broke up. They got back together. I took care of him, I reassured her. I spent more time at work dealing with their drama and trying to teach him how to be a considerate partner than I did working. I stopped writing (anything but pleas for mercy). I read book after book after book about healthy communication, about polyamory, about relationships. I practiced what I read, threw myself into it. I used I statements. I didn’t make rules, I drew boundaries. I tried to understand where he was coming from. I decided what I could compromise on and what I couldn’t. I didn’t assume. I asked for clarification. I laid out what I expected point by point, coolly and quietly and implacably. I stuck to my guns.
He starts to complain that I’m not being fair, that all of the books that I’m reading are turning me against him.
On a beautiful Sunday in September that I had assumed (never assume, how had I not learned?) that we would spend together, he told me over brunch that he was going to go hang out with her for the rest of the day.
I think: Contain the explosion, self. This is what is wrong with you. He’ll never listen to you if you start shouting or crying in the middle of your favorite brunch spot. Take a deep breath. Take a bite of your eggs and bacon and cheese, yes, even though they taste like ash. I say: “Oh?”
I pull it off. I keep my cool. On the way home from brunch I ask, calmly, if maybe we couldn’t put some time on the calendar for us to spend together, maybe next weekend. So that I don’t assume. So that I don’t have to eat ash for brunch again.
Pay attention. This is the moment that I know, the moment that I am ready, even though it comes before only the second time that I will tell him that I want a divorce. He tells me that I am too cold, that I am treating him like a coworker, that he doesn’t want to be obligated to spend time with me.
I threaten to leave, he begs me to stay. He swears that he can change. I don’t believe him, and yet, and yet. Still, somehow, I don’t want to hurt him.
Only two weeks pass between the second time I ask for divorce and the third. I spend those two weeks running the numbers on whether I can support myself and wondering how I can circumvent his manipulation, how I can convince him not to fight to keep me. We don’t talk much. I stop asking him for things. I think that he thinks that this is progress.
He makes it easy for me, finally. We spend the day together, not talking about anything except his most recent drama with her. I cook a wonderful dinner. He takes one bite and dissolves into sobs. He says the truest thing that he’s said to me in years: “I don’t deserve you.”
I see my chance, I take it. I lie. I tell him no, that isn’t true, it just doesn’t work between us. I tell him it’s no one’s fault. I tell him all the things he told me about her, all the ways that she is a better fit for him than me. I tell him that they’re meant to be, that she needs him more than I do (ok, that one is true; as far as I know she needs him, and I just need him gone). I tell him that I wish him well. I convince him to divorce me. I convince him that it’s in his best interest, because I know he doesn’t care one whit what’s best for me. I’ve learned that lesson, finally.
The next day he moves in with her, and I start the process of cutting myself free.
Of course, even once she’s convinced us to leave, we’re still not done taking. Just a little more reaction mass, a little more water, just all the edible things that are left growing from her scarred skin. Just a little bit more. Just what we need to survive without her. We’ll leave soon, we promise. We take up until the last minute, and then we leave scorch marks as we blast off, a final mark for her to remember us by.
I handle the legal paperwork, the logistics of splitting our belongings, our finances. I teach him how to choose an insurance plan. I send him the paperwork for his (our, he insists) cats. I keep him updated on legal proceedings. I re-lease the apartment. I arrange for it to be cleaned. I move myself into a new apartment.
He congratulates himself for helping me grow into such an independent person. He thanks me for teaching him how to cook. For teaching him how to budget. He tells me how he is getting on. He questions my choice of apartment. He tries to lie to his car insurance that so his rates won’t increase. He asks if we can be friends yet. He never once asks me how I’m doing.
Finally, one day, I block his number.
I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck. I feel like my brain is disconnected from my body, like I’m looking at the world through a fog. I never wonder if I made the right decision to leave, but I do worry sometimes, that I will never come back to myself, that he has broken something in me irrevocably. I should know better.
I spend a lot of time with friends and a lot of time at home, glorying in blessed quiet, blessed privacy. The parts of me that I had hidden, that I had banished, start to come back to me. I start to feel whole, a novel sensation. My boss and my boss’s boss tell me I hold myself differently, that I look like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I start to write again.
I start to live.
We check in on Earth from time to time; send out a probe, bounce some radio waves off her skin. We wait, hoping that she will give us another chance, that if left alone she will regain her innocence, her naivety, and let us try again. We have learned our lesson, we let our radio waves say. But she doesn’t listen to us, doesn’t respond to our pleas. Instead she evolves into something new, something resilient, something wise. New life crawls across her skin, strange life, life beyond our understanding, surviving and reinforcing conditions that will never again be hospitable to us. She flourishes without us, and we will never understand what happened.