It Was War
Cathy Deutsch
Word Count 650
Marriage is complicated. Divorce is messy. After twenty years in a relationship with a woman, after numerous therapists, couples counseling sessions, tearful and angry nights, I finally spurted out in a session that I wanted to separate.
It was as much a surprise to me as it was to my partner, as I had always been the one begging to work it out. By some force of strength summoned at just the right moment, like an uncontrollable unexpected sneeze, I declared my emancipation. The room was silent. The therapist quietly waiting, my partner in silent shock, my heart pounding, I realized that there was no turning back.
After two decades together we had a very complicated web of attachments; a business, a much desired child I had borne by insemination, a home of value and twenty years of combined family from coast to coast. The dismantling was akin to untying the tiny knots that often gathered in my daughter's tousled hair. It was painful but necessary. As her behavior had always been unpredictable– swinging from easygoing to aggressive, intensely critical to often remote– I was not surprised that she became an irrational adversary. She promptly moved into the guest room and I slept with my purse, the deed to the house and computer to ensure she did not take any important items from me. It was war.
Mediation failed and I engaged a lawyer. As she had been given equal parental guardianship of our daughter, I knew I had to do everything to protect her and my finances. Having gotten together before gay marriage was legal, the law held no sway in our parting. My daughter was heartbroken, confused and angry and did not have the maturity to navigate this sudden upheaval. I advocated taking a salary from our business so that we wouldn't have to work side by side and started planning my next move.
Even chosen struggles are hard, and though I knew the choice was the correct one, the pulling apart was uneven as we still had dinners together to ease our daughter’s anxiety. At school functions we sat a row or two apart so our daughter would not have to search the entire audience for our faces. Small things like dishes and books became touchstones of memories of better times and often evoked an old story. A joke would make us laugh and we would momentarily forget that we were actually taking our lives apart spoon by spoon. She moved out and my daughter painfully shuttled back and forth with a suitcase full of Beanie Babies.
Our lawyers drew up papers which were constantly contested but I held fast and did not crumble under her pressure as all my friends who had been through this told me that's what you pay lawyers for. Once, she unexpectedly showed up at the house an hour before my daughter was due home from school in order to intimidate me into removing a clause in our agreement. I knew this would devastate my girl as she had just started adjusting to the change. I told her to leave or I’d call the police. She left and I felt like Scarlett O'hara in the doorway of Tara guarding my homestead which I did ultimately get to keep.
It was a sunny day in June when we met at the lawyers office to sign our final custody agreement and division of assets. It was swift and unemotional and I recall feeling such lightness as I nearly skipped to the parking lot. I got into the car, rolled down the windows and put on the loudest rock and roll I could find as I drove into my future.
When I got home I called a dear friend who, with his wife, had supported me through many panicked late night phone calls. “Cath”, he said, “it's always over way before it's over. You’ve arrived.”
Cathy is a freelance writer, essayist and former restaurant columnist. She recently published an essay on The Rolling Stones which rocked her world. She resides in Westchester County NY, an hour north of NYC with her partner John and her feisty Shiz Tzu Oliie.