We’ve Been Divorced Ten Years. With the Benefit of Hindsight, I Now Realize: You WERE Moving My Shit

A message to my ex-wife

Generated by Dall-E in response to the query “a surrealist image of a wedding ring on a nightstand next to a pair of headphones”.

Divorce is a storm. It rattles you, frightens you – it makes you feel small and unsafe. It obstructs your vision, and only after the storm has passed — when the rain has stopped and you feel the sun on your skin — are you able to see things clearly. We’ve been divorced for ten years. We’ve both moved on, both remarried. With the perspective provided by distance, I now know for certain: You were moving my shit.

I knew it.

Our love was a bonfire, bright and intense but destined to burn out. We were young, and we didn’t know that attraction and compatibility aren’t the same thing. I’m astonished, in hindsight, by my own ignorance. I didn’t know that love must be given without conditions. I didn’t know that petty resentments, if left unattended, will grow like weeds. And I didn’t know that it’s not normal for stuff around the house to go missing on a regular basis. Not when you’re in your mid-20s and of sound mind.

Here’s what I did know: I knew my earbuds didn’t just sprout fucking legs and walk off. I knew that I usually put them on the shoe thing by the door, or sometimes — rarely! — on the dog crate. And yet, when I innocently asked “hey, have you seen my ear buds?” you tore into me like an ocelot ripping the head off a lizard. Even though the basket of keys that used to be on the shoe thing had been moved and there was a pile of mail in its place — you obviously rearranged things so where the fuck are my earbuds? I didn’t have to be Detective Fucking Poirot to figure out what happened. This is the type of thing that’s clear with the benefit of perspective.

I admit I was selfish. I didn’t do my share of the housework. I should have, partly because love is often expressed through modest tasks, and partly because it would have kept me from buying four goddamned phone chargers in the span of two years. When you moved out, I learned a lot about my latent egoism, and I also found three of those fucking chargers behind the bed. It’s clear what was happening: You’d put them on the pillow when you’d dust the nightstand, and then they’d fall behind the bed. And then I’d ask “where’s my phone charger?”, and you’d act like I had accused you of the Zodiac murders.

I can see those patterns now!

A decade has passed. I’m married again. It’s funny how a new vantage point can broaden your insight; Plato’s Allegory of the Cave comes to mind, with its lessons about the limits of knowledge within constrained experience. To wit: Unless one has cohabitated with more than one person, one might not know that incessant “straightening up” is not normal. Nor would one know that other people are fully capable of understanding that if I put my keys on the coffee table, and you move them to my nightstand, then you haven’t “helped”.

Also, consider the scientific method: Comparing my life then to now, precisely one variable has changed: you. You’re not here. And now I can always find my stuff. Ipso facto: You were moving my stuff. You were. You were. You were. You swore up and down that you weren’t, but you were. You were.

I was right.

The storm has passed. The rainwater has soaked into the ground and is feeding new life. Now liberated from fear and angst, I can reflect on our marriage with the detached curiosity of an archaeologist examining ruins. I know now that “almost compatible” is a synonym for “incompatible”. I know that in order to grow up, we needed to grow apart. Our divorce was for the best. I know these things. I know them as certainly as I know that at this very moment, the bill from my dentist’s office – which I need, because I have to mail it to Aetna – is currently on the kitchen counter, next to the bowl of pens and rubber bands. Because that’s where I fucking left it.

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