Steven Axelrod, with part one of a seven part series from the front lines of modern divorce.
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It was finally over.
I stumbled through the darkness in the brittle November air. I could hear the wind chattering in the trees, and distant surf on the south shore. There was the sound of a car engine in the distance, faint and growing fainter.
She had finally said it.
“I don’t love you any more.”
I banged my fists on my thighs, throttled and gasping. I hadn’t even grabbed my coat. But I couldn’t be in the house with her for one more second.
We had been in the middle of the unspoken knowledge for years. It was like living in Chernobyl as desperate Russians were starting to do again now: ignoring the obvious and waiting for the symptoms to show.
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And this was how pitifully little she knew me – she couldn’t understand why those words would stop a conversation. Didn’t I know it already? Wasn’t it obvious? She was right, too – I had no business being surprised. We had been in the middle of the unspoken knowledge for years. It was like living in Chernobyl as desperate Russians were starting to do again now: ignoring the obvious and waiting for the symptoms to show.
Someone in a Ford ranger offered me a ride. I shook my head, waved them on.
I was talking to myself and I didn‘t want anyone else to hear. Only crazy people talk to themselves. Fine. I felt crazy tonight. I spoke to the black asphalt under my feet:
If there’s no love, what’s the point? It’s waiting in a movie line in front of a closed theatre. It’s soggy cereal, it’s tepid coffee, it’s cold toast and hard butter. It’s corrupted computer files and broken shoelaces and the look on the doctor’s face when he brings you the biopsy report. It’s dread and boredom, fear and guilt, it’s every putrid emotion. It’s years and years of more of the same. It’s waste. It’s not even tragedy. There are no heroes. It’s smaller than life. It’s the tea scum that won’t come off the inside of your cup, it’s the glare of sunlight on chrome in your eyes. It’s skidmarks in your underwear and nail clippings in the carpet. It’s the juice at the bottom of the garbage bag.
Shit, in other words.
Without love it’s nothing but shit.
I ran out of breath. I found I was crying. It was a physical response, like a cramp. I walked and walked until I realized I had no destination. I was just stalling. I couldn’t stay out much longer in the cold. There was no one I could stay with in this alien place, no one I could trust to hear my story.
There was nowhere to go but home.
So I went there.
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Photo: A Ferris wheel sits abandoned in the deserted town of Pripyat, less than two miles from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant by Sergey Ponomarev / AP
Very well described. That absolute loss and betrayal that is felt when those words are said out loud. Such an isolating experience. But like the tea scum on the bottom of your cup, this pain can be removed with a pinch of salt. You just have to be prepared to polish a little to find the cleanliness.
Great stuff… And brutally honest…
(Reminds me of that 80s song, “Don’t You Want Me, Baby?” where the man sings first about a relationship that just ended… then the woman sings her part….That would be interesting to have a multi-part essay from both sides… Not here, of course, ….)
That is an amazing sad chilling photograph. Thank you for posting it,
One of the few article’s in GMP that describes something close if not a realistic story of an average male without preaching politically correct angle of a typical male’s experience in the real world.
I look forward to reading a male perspective on this experience. If part 1 is any indication, it will be an emotional and enlightening read. Thank you.
The stark realization of the finality of it is the hardest to comprehend, but you move on, one step at a time. This is now in your past, Steven…how do you feel today? I’m currently in your November as you describe it. It hurts…and it is as you say…shit
Beautiful writing. I really felt your pain when you were describing the many manifestations of shit.