Exactly when is a relationship over? Experience has taught me to pay heed to the exact moment when I would walk away and refer to my former love interest as my “ex”. It had been so easy in the younger days of my relationships. There had been issues of trust, drug addiction, painful tears and nights of betrayal. When I lost my first partner to illness there were days, seemingly endless days, of unbearable sorrow. The breaking of my heart was audible even to those who were deaf.
Now, in the wake of a mutual dissolution and after many tearful sessions with a relationship therapist, property requires division. Love requires division. In the basement of our house the multitudes of photographs and possessions sat in boxes, waiting, hoping for a new home. There are “custodial” issues about the dog. On the walls our artwork, collections from three homes, need to be divided. I want the pen and ink originals, he wants the original photographs. The piano is mine, anything Carly Simon is his.
There are sofas, tables and chests. There is the wrought iron bed we picked out together and shared a life in. It sat regally adorned with custom made bed linens, all but a memory now. How do we go about dividing the collection of movies, the kitchenware and the music? In the cabinets, ever so organized, are the recipes, a collection of laborious hours of care that brought an entire family to the table for holidays, dinner parties and poolside gatherings. It is all in the past.
Not visible are the emotions. Which get packed away carefully and which thrown out? Do you cling to resentment or discard it? Is friendship neatly wrapped and tucked away for the future? Is hope, packed in newsprint, carefully placed in a small box and labeled with a marking pen never to be opened again? There are multitudes of divisions that must be tended to.
How, in an amicable breakup, do you go from partner to “ex”? How do you go from living outside of the box to suddenly being placed in the box, the “Ex -Box”, and like the photographs in my basement, a fragment of time, prepare to be shipped off to a new location?
Loss; I’ve grown to detest the word; it has been in my vocabulary for decades. I’ve lost my grandparents, my parents, my partners, my pets, my newly found family and my sense of child- like wonder at the world.
In balance, however, I have gained. I am a man who is becoming independent, challenging my inner soul, seeking new paths, making new friends and accepting fate. I am attempting to live in the moment when the moment seems difficult to hold onto. The loss goes hand in hand with the gain.
As the “ex-partner” I am now the ex “son- in- law”, the ex “brother-in-law”, the former friend. My world, filled with parties and Sunday dinners, has been stripped away. The life I once knew is now bare, like the tree branches of the winter.
I think of my life often and mourn my loss. It is no different than any other. It hurts. The pain is embedded, sometimes surfacing when least expected. There is loss. Yes, once more the word stares me down. I have lost my familiar world.
As I am packed away in the “ex-box” I surround myself in bubble wrap. It cushions me. My soul is insulated like the china, the fragile glass, which sits in my basement, protected so if it is jarred during the move it will survive. It is packed, sealed with heavy cellophane tape, ready for shipment to a new location; the “ex-box” is loaded on the truck that will carry it to its new home. There will, in time, be a new home, a new life; it is inevitable.
We are all placed in boxes. We are all the containers which seal together our emotions. For some it is easy to open the lid and let themselves out; for others it is a challenge. For me it has taken numerous life experiences to tear through that cellophane and push back the cardboard, the rigid material, which keeps me in the dark. This time, while no one was looking, I brought with me a box cutter; my determination.
From within the “ex-box” I push the blade of my determination out, slicing through the tape. The air has begun to enter; it is fresh, full of oxygen and therefore full of life. As I glide the blade along the cardboard there is light coming through. I can see outside the box as the light warms me. With both hands the cardboard comes undone as it pushes back, away from my being.
Stepping out of confinement and into the light, the clear plastic bubble wrap that surrounded me during my journey begins to loosen. I am freeing myself from the final constraints of the “ex-box”. Looking forward with child-like wonder the world is returning to me. It is less than it had been in my youth but more than it had been recently.
As far as the eye can see there is the marvel of friendship, the depth of family and a new understanding of my hearts’ frailties as well as its’ strengths. I shall never be simply the “ex” but the friend who once was and always is. There shall always be a place at a table with my name on it, a warm feeling, like summer, when my name is spoken. I have learned a valuable lesson while spending time placed in the box; it is not simply about forever but about here, about now. I have recovered from where the journey began. I have survived being me in the “ex-box”.
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