Season of Surrender

After teaching through sixteen months of a pandemic, I had suffered some major episodes of anxiety and depression. Things at work had become tense and politically divided. I felt isolated in my classroom “bubble”. The virus infecting the outer world was definitely taking its toll on my inner world.

Yet through it all, I seldom missed a day of work and kept my promise to the kids and their parents. Mostly I came home to sleep off the stress. After getting my second vaccine, I thought the worst of the year was over, but then the real test was just beginning.

During April vacation, without any notice, my partner of thirteen years asked me to “leave” and give him some “space”. I could only return on the condition I had a “complete psychiatric evaluation”. (I actually did have a Zoom call with a psychiatrist in mid May, but he implied I was crazy to go back to that marriage, and applauded all my efforts to find calming strategies that worked. )

For a little while I wallowed. I sat in disbelief. I clung to all the ideas of what seemed to be a good relationship. I felt paralyzed and desperate to change his mind.

Then one morning about a week after I left, I took the wedding band off my finger and decided to file for divorce.

(Sometimes the best decisions are simply made for us.)

I felt a definite shift in my happiness from the moment I left that house. In a matter of hours from his request, I moved in with my thirty-year old daughter. It was an apartment forty minutes away. I’d been renting it for her and her brother, who’d long since moved on, but kept it because my daughter had plans to continue school and was not currently on her feet enough to afford a nice place of her own. It was practical. I had never spent a single night there in the five years I’d been renting until that cold afternoon in April that seemed destined to be the longest night of my life.

I was wrong. The first night I slept on the couch. I woke staring at the tips of an elderly evergreen hedge that abuts the property. It’s one of the few visible vegetations on the edge of this urban strip. Still groggy from the ordeal, I fixated on them. I realized they were similar to the giant pines I could see from my bedroom window that lined the edge of Oyster Creek. Those trees had a message for me that came through loud and clear: there are nice places everywhere and what matters is that you are safe and happy. Where you live is not really relevant.

That’s the message I held onto as I began to carve a new life for myself here in Brunswick. I soon found there was little to mourn. My favorite hiking paths in Damariscotta were soon replaced with strolls along the Androscoggin. I soaked in the expansive views from the suspension bridge and the tapestry of waterfall along the Franklyn J. Wood bridge and the hidden gem of paved biking path that explodes with green as spring comes to life. I turn another corner and I’m downtown with tourists, outdoor cafes, college students, funky shops, and all the urban vibe I can inhale. Turning another corner, I’m heading home passing two blocks of gridlock traffic, I’m just a short jog away on the second floor of a well kept multiplex. I adjusted by pretending I was a tourist that gradually made it my decision to stay.

Before long the teflon cookware my daughter refused to use was replaced with a high end stainless steel kitchen set, and the boxes she lived out of were replaced with chic do it yourself glossy white furniture. The porch over hang became my “veranda” and as spring gently gave up her frost, I purchased easy care annuals placed in hanging baskets, wrought iron plant stands, and a variety of decorative pots. I splurged on porch furniture that at least looked like it might belong at an affordable bed and breakfast.

And now I invite friends to sit on my “veranda” and enjoy a healing cup of chai before we amble downtown to an outdoor cafe or walk to the mystical Labyrinth tucked into neatly groomed hiking trails, a mere 1.7 miles down the road.

Today, four and a half months later, I feel safe and securely on my way somewhere else. I’m no longer clinging onto someone else’s idea of my sanity. My thoughts are crisp and my outlook is good.

I hope to offer words of inspiration to those who find they need to escape a life that’s not working, either by choice or by force. A better life is always just around the corner.