a long time ago, a supervisor told me that people are the most unpredictable product. but humans are creatures of habit, i’d proudly retorted. he ignored me, and explained why data on patterns and trends matters so much. because, while the behavior might look different person to person or maybe even over time in the same person, it can be traced back to pretty reliable motivations. the triggers are there, if we know where to look and for what we’re looking. people are who and how they are, he’d said, even when they don’t want to be. especially, he’d emphasized, when they don’t want to be. i didn’t revisit that until after my divorce. after realizing i had focused on all the ways i could repair what was never actually broken.
i first met my ex-husband in middle school at church. a friend brought him after our youth pastor taught us what evangelism could look like at our age. we crushed on each other a bit, but nothing really happened. he seemed too particular for my liking, and i may have been a bit too flitty for his. a couple years later, it didn’t much matter. the youth ministry sort of lost its luster. we all grew up; high school changed what life required of us, and many of us got jobs that required us to work sunday service and wednesday night bible study hours. so, when we crossed paths at an ice cream social at the university we both ended up going to, it seemed kismet. i thought the creator was orchestrating a grand symphony for us.
i didn’t rush it. i dated. liked. loved. even got heartbroken. i wanted to get it all out of my system before settling into forever with my fated. when we finally got together, it sort of felt more like completing an item on a checklist than the kismet moment in time people lauded it as. where they saw a good catch, i felt trapped. with him, i couldn’t be the version of myself i loved most, but i also had never seen any woman be that version in marriage, so i thought it was par for the course. i thought our married selves were meant to be different. more reserved. not knowing how to be married, we just did what we saw other married people do. as i consider it, we never really cleaved unto one another. we didn’t know how. so, we folded. we even folded the red flags in and called them tests. and i think we thought that, at some point, folding was enough. that, one day, it’d be easier to just stay that way.
you know how, if you don’t have scissors, but you need to only use a piece of a piece of paper, you fold it back and forth and sharpen the crease where you plan to separate the pieces? and how, after all those folds, and maybe a little moisture, the paper just sort of gives way? that’s how our divorce happened. we folded. and folded again. and again. back and forth. and by the time the first little bit of rain came, the fold wasn’t a fold anymore.
i was returning from a field trip with my students when i received the curious text that changed my life: i don’t want to do this anymore. at the time, i’d thought he was referring to his job. i had just recently resigned from my sales job to pursue my master’s degree and go into education. i thought he wanted to sit down and plan his own escape. when i later realized his truth, i tried desperately to save our marriage. it wasn’t so much that i thought it worth saving, but that i didn’t want to fail publicly. i didn’t want to admit that we’d made a mistake. i didn’t want to add to the statistic. and all i could think of were all the divorced women i’d known who never even found self-love let alone that of another person. i was scared of what was on the other side. i didn’t know if the grass could be greener.
i later realized that he didn’t want a divorce. he was content with not wanting me as his wife and not allowing anyone else to have me, either. we were to remain married on paper. split the bills. share the house. and “do our own thing.” he knew me enough to know that i couldn’t, in good conscience, do ‘my own thing’ and still be married. i didn’t take my vows lightly. so, if we divorced, it’d be solely my decision. my financial burden. my public admission of failure. it took me awhile, and then just a moment.
in the thick of that season, i could only think of how surprising his actions were. he suddenly seemed so callous. combative. manipulative. so unlike the boy i’d met in church all those years ago. i could not understand how someone who called themselves my friend first could ever treat me roughly as their partner. the pursuit of happiness, for me, is intrinsically linked to my ability to flow where the streams take me and to allow others that same pursuit. even if it doesn’t suit or serve me. for him, it was to control the flow—to dam or divert the streams at will, especially to suit or serve him. that’s what made me seem flitty—what made him too particular to me, respectively, way back when. i just didn’t think he’d be that way with me. but, it was never about me, and i won’t fault him for being his authentic self. it just served as a reminder: when people show you who they are, believe them. the first time. the best people, places, and things in life don’t often require you to fold. and even schisms as cataclysmic as divorce have their merits.
bloom + flow 