First of all let me say this happened in the way distant past. And if time doesn’t heal all wounds, at least it allows us to laugh at those wounds. Hard.
The divorced among us know that nobody likes hearing news of your divorce. And it’s not at the forefront of your mind which friends you may have neglected to call to let them know about your divorce. The inner inner circle already knows because they saw the whole thing go down. But the outer inner circle, the ones who don’t know but would be truly hurt if they didn’t hear it from you yourself, are a little more tricky. You call, you need to catch up for a half hour on how they’re doing, by then it’s just awkward to say “Hey, so I’m getting a divorce,” so you let it go for another month. It is a bummer of a conversation that is very draining, and for that reason I put it off again and again.
I recently heard of a joint Facebook post to announce a divorce, and I kinda like that idea. It spares you from having to say the same awful news over and over again: while pushing the swing on the playground, while checking out which canned cat food has the most protein, while wishing I hadn’t brought my lunch because my co-worker’s Indian food looks so much better. Sometimes, during my divorce, I wished I was famous. Like Gywneth—everyone knew about her conscious uncoupling as soon as she came up with it, and she only had to say it once.
With my dear friend JJ, I had to respond to her wedding invite with a phone call about my own divorce. “T and I are getting a divorce?” I said, as if I wasn’t sure of it, but I was. It is the worst news to tell a newly engaged friend. I felt like vomiting on her would have been kinder. “So, bring a date,” she said. Her wedding was two months away. “I’m not going to be dating by then!” I said. “So, bring a friend,” she said, and I could hear the smile in her voice. It was silly of me, I realized, to think my divorce was going to dampen her engagement. I wasn’t THAT important. If I was, my conscious uncoupling would have been on the nightly news.
By the time the wedding rolled around, it was 8 months into my divorce proceedings and I was casually dating two guys. I actually did invite one of them to the wedding. I’m shy anyway and the thought of going stag to my high school friend’s wedding paralyzed me with fear. And I couldn’t NOT go to the wedding. This friend was also my college roommate and it would’ve been plain rude not to go. The guy I invited was named Bradley. We had been on a handful of dates and I knew the relationship had no potential because his fridge was stocked to the gills with water bottles and he didn’t recycle. In this day and age! But he was good hearted (when it came to people, not the environment), cute, and we laughed a lot.
On the afternoon of the wedding Bradley called me from his car, crying. “My mom just had a heart attack,” he said. “I’m on the road to Phoenix,” he said between sobs. “Don’t worry, she’s going to be okay,” he said. To me! Poor guy. (For the record, she was okay.)
Looking back, I could have, and should have, just faked the stomach flu and not gone to the wedding. It was a giant beautiful wedding and nobody would’ve even noticed my absence, I’m positive. But at the time, I overestimated my importance and decided I had no choice but to go alone. It would be a good challenge for my shy self, I decided. It would be an opportunity to say to all those high school people “Yes, I made it! I’m divorced and I’m not ashamed!”
I wore a black spaghetti strapped sundress and felt actually pretty for the first time in a year. Divorce has a way of making you feel not very pretty. The wedding itself was darling. I got there in the nick of time so didn’t have to say hello to anyone before sneaking into a seat. The bride had the rabi read the book, “I Like You,” to the groom, and I’ve loved that little gem of a book ever since.
At the cocktail hour, I realized that going recently divorced to a wedding is like attending grossly underdressed, or maybe like arriving in just your underwear. Everyone, everyone, reacts as if you are doing something inappropriate. In my next life, I will bring my therapist and have her wait in the bathroom for my frequent visits. The first person I ran into was my high school boyfriend, who I’ll just call Slim. Slim was now joyfully married to one of my sorority sisters, and they were all sweet and touchy feely with each other. It would have been cute, but when you’re going though a divorce, that stuff is just not. “Where is T?” Slim asked. “We’re divorced,” I said. He made puppy dog eyes at me and rubbed my arm. “I’m going to get you a drink,” he said and walked away, leaving me with his wife. “What happened?” she asked, her brow deeply knit in concern. This from a person who never knew my ex husband, whom I hadn’t spoken to since before I had gotten married 9 years ago! “Oh, the regular,” I said and smiled. As soon as my drink came I traipsed across the hotel grounds to find a bathroom where I could sit undiscovered and text the two guys I was dating. One to say, “I’m so sorry about your mom, is she okay?” and the other to say, “HELP! I am dying at a wedding. I am a pariah. Send paratroopers in a very tiny discrete helicopter. AT ONCE!!!”
During the dinner I was thoughtfully placed at a table of people I attended high school with but hadn’t spoken to since high school. And, I forgot to mention this, I had married my high school English teacher’s son. When I did that I never thought how awkward it would be to divorce him and then attend a wedding where everyone from high school was sitting at dinner with me. The things we don’t think about. And, there was an empty seat next to me, for my date, who was absent because of his poor mother. Everyone assumed the seat was for my husband and my husband was taking too long in the bathroom. Everyone, in turn, because the table was big and people were having their own conversations, asked me, “Where is T?” So five times at least, I had to say, “We are divorced.”
Slim, who was sitting to my right, kept supplying me with drinks and making sad eyes at me. I thought at any moment he was going to reach across the table and cut my meat for me. A sweet overbearing woman, Big Eyes, who married her high school boyfriend of course, who was sitting right next to her, said, “It’s just a shame the two of you didn’t get counseling. I mean, considering what you’re doing to your children.” So I said, “We did get counseling. Funny how it doesn’t work.” And then cracked up to the empty chair next to me. Big Eyes said, “Too bad is wasn’t Christian counseling.” I gagged on the meat that Slim had failed to cut up for me.
When Slim had returned with my third drink people were starting to dance and I knew he would come for me out of pity, that his sweet prying wife would even encourage him to dance with the pathetic divorcee. And so, I pretended I had to use the restroom, I said goodbye to no one, I thanked no one, and I snuck myself out of there feeling awful and judged from a group of people who barely knew me.
All dressed up with no one to give a damn, my kids at their dad’s house for the night, I decided to drive by A’s house. A was the one I asked for the paratroopers from, but he didn’t come through. I thought, maybe he would appreciate the first night I looked pretty in a year. When he opened the door to his house, he smiled hugely at me and said, “You look so cute with your wrinkles and your grey hair.” He really did say this. I didn’t even KNOW I had grey hair! I wanted to cry but more than cry I needed to be hugged and so I let him hug me. “Never say that to me again, please, I’m 34 for Chrissakes,” I said. “Never again,” he said.
Let this be a cautionary tale to you, dear reader. Don’t go stag to your old friend’s wedding when everyone there doesn’t know you are divorced. I would have been far happier eating popcorn on my couch watching Mad Men, pretending they were just about to cast me opposite Don Draper, in my black spaghetti strap dress, wrinkles, grey hair and all.
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