I’m reading “Split” by Suzanne Finnamore. She manages the impossible task of describing her divorce in ways that totally avoid cliche and bring new meanings to all the feelings we’ve all gone through. Her husband cheated and left her and their young son and, like me, she tried to hold on to him for a year while the divorce was going through. She kept having sex with him, and did everything to get him back. She couldn’t accept the reality of the split for a long time.
I totally related to her experience, though her husband was quite different from mine and their relationship was also very different. I actually wound up feeling that I behaved pretty well compared with her, although she was incredibly brave to reveal all the humiliating begging she did to get him back. Once my husband left that was it, i never asked him to come back and pretty much cut him loose. Her writing is brilliant however, so much better than most books about divorce.
Here is a funny sample. The author has been relating how she is on a first name basis with Jesus because when the pain gets unbearable she says under her breath, “Jesus walk with me. Take this pain. I can’t take it” Jesus sends Lisa instead. She stops by in a crocheted dress, with an armful of snapdragons and tells me exactly what to do. “….replace all the sheets, Hotel quality will do. Take daily warm, deep baths with lavender and rosemary scents. Also have a full and not ‘express’ manicure/pedicure without delay. You want the color to be a pale beige. Yes…pale beige for mourning, and not a frost, a matte. Naps of long and vulgar lengths should also be rigorously taken.”
It’s really a fun book–but with a lot of truth and understanding about the nature of betrayal and divorce.