Interrobang – Prologue

Interrobang – Prologue

February 2022

“Sorry, there’s no way around it, you’re going to have to get a divorce if you want to buy. Otherwise you’ll need his permission to sell eventually even if you were separated when you bought. It’s because of the dower act…” he continued explaining but all I could hear was blood rushing through my ears and a high pitched panic scream in the distance. I tried to breathe but found the old knot in my diaphragm had caught hold and would not let go. A Gordian knot that I had tried to undo with deep breathing, meditation, yoga, swimming, running, weight training, mindfulness, crystals, tarot, years of therapy, mountains of self-help books, journalling, overthinking, sleeplessness, alcohol, unsafe sex with strangers, harsh scolding and self-beratement, isolation, connection, workaholism, attempting to be invisible, and self-harm. My vision became blurred, the room around me spun one very slow, complete revolution, and suddenly he snapped back into visual and auditory focus with a force that hurt me physically. 

“You’ve been separated for nine years? Is there a reason you don’t want to get divorced?” he wondered aloud with a kind, concerned inflection that felt physically painful and dangerously intimate. Ay, there’s the rub. Intimacy. 

What do I say? How can I possibly begin to explain this? I have not told anyone the whole truth of the matter. People have asked, and I have become so adept at not truly answering, preferring to offer the easy excuse of not being able to afford a lawyer. Being a single parent, nobody has really questioned that reason. I appear so competent that I know it is generally assumed that I am able to handle anything that is thrown at me with grace and aplomb, but that could not be further from the truth. It is a persona that I have cultivated over time, the only part of myself that seems safe to share with anyone because it involves no vulnerability. I have all the answers. I have read ALL the books, I say, invoking hyperbole for comedic effect. I am fucking hilarious. I know that people feel at ease with me and that gives me a feeling of control and power. I research. I need to learn and know as much as possible because I feel so vacant that I fear the vast, dark emptiness of my heart will in fact flip me inside out and engulf me. I fear it, yet I want it. Badly. Physically. Viscerally. Sexually. 

“Mom, if you ate yourself, would you double in size or disappear?” my child had asked years prior. Bedtime with this perfect twelve year old that I had somehow created was always a philosophical adventure that often lasted well into the night. If I succumbed to the black hole inside of me, would I disappear? Or would the trauma I left in my wake cause the knot to double in size and reside inside of my child? Would this be a burden or a gift? This line of thinking was the only reason I was still alive.