Live, Collapse, Smile

Elizabeth Gilbert wrote the only book about the experience of divorce that I read and enjoyed. Most books about a woman surviving divorce are like a bad (as if there were good, but bear with me) Lifetime channel movie. Eat, Pray, Love hit home in ways that I can't even begin to express. This complete stranger is somehow a kindred spirit, we weirdly even share the same birthday. I cried through the first few chapters of the book, not because these were laden with any sort of sentimentality or overt emotional manipulation (as they do on Lifetime), but more because she had somehow managed to have a similar trajectory for her marriage.

Our stories start out similar. She married the person who seemed perfect at the time and eventually ended up with the marriage, home and career that she set out to have and somehow it was completely empty. There she was crying on the bathroom floor because she wasn't pregnant and was relieved, and yet that wasn't how she was supposed to feel. I've been on that bathroom floor, I've cried those tears. And much like her, it wasn't long after that realization that the marriage finally fell apart.

After and during her divorce she almost immediately fell into a passionate and ultimately doomed relationship, one that was intense and hard to shake, even after it was supposed to be over. I had the same experience, but this is where the overlap in our stories ends.

Elizabeth was a successful writer prior to her divorce, and so she managed to get a book deal allowing her to spend a year traveling the globe and writing about her experiences. I simply lost my job and home. Eat, Pray, Love refers to the three parts of her journey. She went to Italy and experienced pleasure to it's fullest through eating and soaking up life, while yet being celibate. Then she traveled to India where she learned spiritual devotion and even experienced some degree of enlightenment. Finally she went to Bali of all places and there she ultimately learned to balance pleasure and spirituality while learning to love again.

My story is less glamorous. My job ended, in part related to my divorce, but largely because I didn't fully appreciate it until it was gone. I didn't get to travel the world while I figured things out, I went to Ohio. So if I were so write the story using Elizabeth Gilbert's format, my story would be titled Live, Collapse, Smile.

After my ex-husband left I soon felt very free. I spent time with my friends, I finally began to feel at home in Detroit. Eventually I fell head over heels for someone in a short period of time. I'd never fallen so hard or so fast, for the first time in years I felt like I was really living my life rather than watching it pass me by. Suddenly I was making choices for myself, rather than doing what I thought I should or felt obligated to. No more resentment, no more feeling trapped, just me and my life. What is interesting is what I learned in that period. After all those years of resisting having children, of wishing I weren't married, and devoting my heart and soul to my career I came to realize that I really wanted everything I'd been fighting. I wanted to be married and have children and my career just didn't matter to me at all anymore. AND the current love of my life, the man I was so crazy about, wasn't the one to give me all of that.

Thus, the Collapse chapter began. I somewhat abruptly broke up with my love and everything fell apart. The full weight of everything crashed in around me and I felt like I was drowning. Everything I knew and understood about my world had changed. I cried without ceasing for over 24 hours, I didn't eat, I didn't sleep. I gave up. In the middle of all this I learned that I was losing my home. I felt such hopelessness and despair. All I wanted to do was sleep until it all stopped hurting. I wanted to just wake up years later when everything was better. Of course this is never an option, we have to live through our pain, and I barely did, but I made it with considerable help from my family and friends. Ultimately I had to let the last remnants of my old life go. My friends and family pulled together to pack up my things and move me to Ohio where they could take care of me while I picked up the pieces.

Ohio has been a string of unfulfilling and menial jobs living in a place that is far from interesting or cultured and somehow in the middle of all of that I found myself. For the first time in my life I'm clear about what I want and where I want to go. I even managed to find a wonderful person and fall in love........(yes again.) As much as it shocks me, what I really want is to take care of him and have a family together. I'm living my life as I want to, not as I perceive I'm supposed to or to please anyone else. Despite my being broke and having no discernible career, I'm happy. I smile and laugh all the time. I had all but forgotten how to do both before my marriage fell apart. I was numb then, and now I'm fully alive. It may not be perfect, it may be messy, but I'm living and smiling about it.

While Elizabeth Gilbert had the privilege of traveling the world to put the pieces of her life back together, I had the privilege of moving to Ohio. I fell in love with a great guy, who ultimately wasn't "the" guy, but helped me to see that I could love again. With him I got out of my dreary home and found the joys of living the way I'd always wanted to. I let go of that relationship and for a little while things seemed bleak, but I learned to let people love me and help me pull myself together. I had to fully collapse before I could find my joy again. My joy is a life quite ordinary in a place far from exceptional, yet spent with someone quite extrodinary. So my story is Live, Collapse, Smile, and I'm all the better for it, even if I didn't get to travel the world while I sorted it all out.

Why I (sort of) love Anarchists

Sometimes a catchy title is worth a great deal............ But seriously, I have a point here. History and common sense will tell us that anarchy is a fool's errand and communism has proven to be a failed experiment in social engineering. The common Achilles heel for both of these belief systems is the assumption that at their core people are basically good. Systems such as government and capitalism are corrupting powers and somehow in the absence of these people will do right by each other. It all sounds good on paper, but somehow it just doesn't add up. Anthropologists will be the first to tell you that societies that lack formal government and organized economic structures are still far from Utopian. People still do wrong by each other, there is still crime and there is still unhappiness.

So why do I (sort of) love anarchists when clearly they "don't get it"? Well, maybe I have a perpetual fascination with the underdog (which I do), but there really is more to it. I really admire anyone who is capable of believing in the basic goodness of people. As a point of fact I disagree. I'm much more aligned with the Buddhists contrary to my Judeo-Christian upbringing. I just don't think people are at their core good or bad, they just ARE. The good and bad are in the choosing, the living, the doing, their BEING. Still, I have to give points to anyone who really believes in the basic goodness of people. I can't do it.

At heart I value a positive outlook and over time it is more and more clear to me that people who see possibilities where others see problems are the ones that change the world for the better. I suppose that is also where the anarchists and communists get it wrong; for all their belief in the goodness of people they seem to get bogged down in negativity that they attribute to systems without fully comprehending the connectedness of those "good" people to their systems.

As we look at the election we have to remember that to whatever extent our government has benefited or failed us, we play a part. I love the positive concept at the core of these fringe ideas, but we all know they got it all wrong. In the United States we don't exist outside our economy or government, we ARE our economy and government. It is a living and breathing reflection of us. These systems are made of people, and these people always have choices. We have the ability to BE the change we wish to see in the world. So please, whatever you do, just do something to make this world a slightly better place than you found it and who knows, maybe I'll change my mind and decide that after all people are basically good. I wouldn't mind being proven wrong.