Do You Believe in Second Chances?

Divorce, reconciliation, nausea, hope

“Be still and know.”

— Glennon Doyle, Untamed

The months after my husband left me were very, very dark. Winter’s long in Nelson, with 3 pm sunsets on the darkest of days. Cloud cover, trapped between mountains, bears down from above — no blue sky, no sunshine, no way out. The whole town travels through dark and cold together, year after year, somehow making it through.

Then slowly, a thing happens. Winter starts lifting — just slightly, in glimpses. And with the first hints of light, even when spring feels impossibly far, there’s a collective exhale. A collective waking up. Subtle and hesitant…but growing, reviving.

A buoying of spirit and restoration of hope that fills, warms, and spills over. Snow and ice melts, water flows, the first songbirds appear, light returns.

I love this. Darkness and light. Contrast. Intensity. A shared shadow of despair mingled with faith. A shared experience of making it to the other side, together.

This is Yin-Yang. This is a singular whole comprising two complementary yet polar opposites — darkness and light defining one another and unable to exist without one another.

This is the way of Nature. This is being human.

That year, the town’s collective emergence nudged my heart out of a long, hard night. That year, more than any other, the town carried me onwards, to dawn.

With enough snow melt, I, at last, got my car out and could rest from walking. With enough light, I started laughing again — including over ridiculously perfect break-up songs and my visceral aversion to Portland (where my ex set up shop), with all its hipster “awesomeness.”

I dated a little, meeting one person for a few walks and such. That part didn’t work out and I wasn’t really feeling it — mostly because no one was like Randy in a million ways and the whole thing felt hollow.

Gone was the me who’d sleep with someone just because. Still, I was strong enough and hopeful enough to try. That was already a win. That was already something I’d thought impossible.

With the shifting of seasons, I also experienced joy again. Not lots of it and not “happiness” exactly. Rather, an unexpected, unfamiliar, shy presence.

A joy that held sadness and depth. A joy that contained new strength and new places of connection and knowing. A joy that could only be born of all that came before. A joy indivisible from heartbreak and allowing my heart to break open so the Universe could fall in.

A joy that on some days or some parts of days was, above all, an emergence. Of hope. Of healing. Of an altogether different me.

And, as such things go, upon finally opening to this and finally surrendering all hope of “us,” I heard from the version of Randy I’d never stopped loving. The Randy I first met on December 31, 2012, on my Colorado doorstep. The Randy who was listening, sensitive, caring, and kind.

That one — that Randy — seemed to have a sixth sense and knew of my energetic moving on. This knowing jolted him awake. This knowing had the tenor of oh my god what have I done.

After months of hiding, this Randy reached out from a place of softness. On the phone one evening, he said he’d made the worst mistake of his life. He said he’d messed everything up. He said he was sorry and didn’t want to lose me.

I answered cautiously, slowly. Staying present with what I was feeling — or, more accurately, with trying to figure that out.

The truth is, I didn’t know. Disbelief. Relief. Joy. Confusion. Validation. Scepticism. Numbness. Exhaustion. Nausea. Hope. They were all there somehow.

Watching them, I also felt detached. As though some part of me was a step or two outside myself looking in. Feeling that I should be feeling everything more intensely, after these long, harsh months. Yet somehow disconnected. Dissociated.

It took so much to get to this place I was now — I’d nearly drowned in the crossing. This was good. This meant I’d survived. But it came at a price.

Finding enough strength to go on meant sacrificing a part of me. I’m not even sure what to name it — this part I had to cleave away with my bleeding hands to save myself. It has to do with innocence. And trust.

Even as my heart opened wide to our humanness — to our sameness — it also learned to expect, or at least not be surprised by, the shadows of others.

The only way to bear the onslaught was to never again feel in quite the same way. To never again be so vulnerable. To never again allow the expression and projection of another’s humanness to enter fully.

This is post-traumatic stress disorder. This is survival. This is what it took.

But I said yes to Randy and retrieved my wedding ring from the black box in the back of the bathroom cabinet. I put it on after many months and said I don’t know but let’s try and see. I also said I’m scared and I can’t live with you when you return to Nelson. And I said I’m not canceling the divorce in process.

Divorce logistics had already taken more energy, time, and money than I had. There were still steps remaining, and I still took them — seeing it to the end even after we’d reconciled.

The final step meant heading to the courthouse to sign one last form and pay one last fee. On my walk there, I chatted with Randy on the phone while watching two bald eagles spar far above.

I removed my ring before walking through the courthouse doors, stuffing it into the fingertip of a wool glove and holding it close in my coat pocket. I felt as though I were sneaking into my own divorce, afraid the court clerk would find us out.

Everything signed and done, I reemerged. I returned the ring to my finger. I called Randy back and we spoke as I walked home.

He didn’t travel to Nelson immediately thereafter, but we started talking for hours each day — always, now, from a place of love and reconciliation. Always with hope in my heart…threaded with cautious, involuntary disconnect.

That’s the best I could do, after this. Heart listening but eyes open. Willing to try but, also, distant. We shall see. We shall see.

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