you will work so hard.

You will topple your chair without hearing it clatter to the ground,
you will pump your knees,
and you will see only one thing in this world.

All of you will move in the same direction at once,
more quickly and more slowly than ever in your life,
all of you on fire,
none of you caring whether you put on makeup today
or whether you dropped your ATM card down the storm drain this morning
or whether anyone loves you.

There is no effort,
no slap of your feet against the concrete,
no twang in your hamstrings,
no thump in your chest;
nothing of that you can exist where you are.

You have dropped every mask and cloak and box
you have ever hidden or trapped yourself in;
all have burned away as you launched yourself
toward this one thing,
forever toward it,
this one and only thing you can remember ever wanting.

You could sprint right out of your clothes
and you wouldn’t care, not a bit;
you are, in just this one moment, free
of almost everything you have ever learned
or worried about
or been led to believe.

Not just the petty problems, but bigger problems, too,
are gone from you.
Hunger, poverty, war, torture:
you have heard of none of them.
You have rendered them nonexistent
with a power that you had not been able to find
until just now,
when a child picked up her foot to step off a curb.

Out of concern for the potentially dead child,
whom I assure you I have completely made up,
you may not yet have noticed that what I am describing
is not only remarkably easy,
but also wonderful.

So perhaps instead I should tell you,
even if it is a far less illuminating example,
that a baseball is falling from the sky
toward your spot in the bleachers,
and you are rising up to meet it.
You are not breathing with the lungs you don’t have,
and you are unfurling a pair of legs that your mind has disowned,
and you have forgotten how much you weigh,
much less that bayonet of a remark
that your own mother ran through you
just ten minutes prior, when you ordered nachos.

The ball is dropping,
and you are reaching,
and this will never be over,
nor should it ever be over,

because the slap of that ball in your hand is not the climax
but the resolution begun,
at which point the world and its mess
will spring up around you once more,

unwieldy and bittersweet all over again.

The key to peace, I have decided
is not praying,
or thinking,
or sitting still,
or humming,
or chanting,
or lighting candles.

The key to satisfaction, I have discovered
is not a new kitchen countertop
or a new pair of shoes
or a faster car
or–dare I say it?
any given cellular phone.

It is to find within yourself a desire so intense
that it drowns you out and washes you clean,
and yet so simple
that even if you fulfill it,
the result will be nothing more costly
than the back of a child’s shirt clutched in your fist
or a dusty baseball in your hand.

I only know this because

(despite the nonexistence of a potentially dead child,
who, again, I assure you I have completely made up)

all of me is moving in the same direction at once,
more quickly and more slowly than ever in my life,
all of me on fire,
none of me caring whether I put on makeup today
or whether I dropped my ATM card down the storm drain this morning
or whether anyone loves me.

On Tuesday, I found myself alone in an exam room with his limp, sick body in the crook of my arm and his head under my chin and I spread out a beach towel on the metal table, so he wouldn’t be cold when he died. It’s funny, how you just automatically do those things. I’ve never thought of myself as maternal in the traditional sense, but there I was, unthinkingly smoothing the terrycloth out even though I was crying so hard that I could barely see.

And then I paused with my gigantic fourteen-pound cat, with the boneless weight of him, because this would be the last time I held him. There is something sacred in that heft, like the way your shoulder feels under a baby’s head or the way your thumbs feel hooked into the belt loops of someone you love, pulling them closer. I used to pick him up every time I came home, to greet that reassuring weight that belonged to me, that I had tended.

I looked down at his enormous paws, just dangling toward the ground–whether in illness or in trust, I don’t know, but to be honest, at that point, it was probably more of the former–and I can still see them when I close my eyes, in contrast against the white tiles. That is the last thing I saw before I relinquished him–not by watching him die, but by easing him onto the table and away from me.

That was good-bye, at least for me.

Then the vet came in, and I petted his head and told him what a good boy he was, and he died, and that was it. I walked blindly out of the office with his empty carrier and fumbled my way into the car while my sister stayed behind and paid the bill.

And when I got home, after I unlocked the door and almost said hello to him, I climbed into bed and stared at the ceiling for hours, and all I kept thinking was not Nito is dead or I’ll never see him again but just What now? What now? What now? because I already felt lost–not sad as one who has lost something very dear, but thunderstruck by baffled horror, as one whose shadow has been flayed off.

Terrible, yes. Painful, yes. But mainly, so disconcertingly goddamned impossible.

Oh, I know. He was just a cat. I don’t mind. I think that’s what makes an animal lover–we don’t mind you small. We don’t mind you stupid. We don’t mind you simple. We are humbled, rather than frustrated or scornful, at your ability to be all of those things. We know that you still have gifts to give, however unknowingly, and that it is our honor to receive them. If some of us do not have babies, it has less to do with how small and stupid and simple they are (as is the common misconception) and much more to do with the fact that babies don’t stay that way. Their lessons become tangled for us the bigger they get, convoluted, nonexistent. They become mysteries, as we are mysteries. You put them in our arms and we fear them, and sometimes even mourn them, not for what they are but for what they will be in fifty years.

But Nito, thankfully, was just a cat, and perfect at it, sitting on the top of the toilet tank with his tail curled neatly around his feet while I read in the tub, or resting against my ribs while I worked on manuscripts.

This is the end of his story, and his story wasn’t anything profound. But that is the art and the joy of being just a cat.

After he died, I stepped over sweatshirts that I thought were cats. I reached down to pet the air. I said hello to no one an embarrassing number of times upon unlocking my deadbolt and stepping into my house. I lay awake each night, crying, because I couldn’t remember how to power down without a purring cat to stay still for.

I’ll get a new cat in a few weeks, a month, I said. I shouldn’t do it now. I should wait. It makes more sense to wait.

I don’t think anyone believed me, which is why on Friday, after three days of pathetic foundering, I received a brisk phone call from my mother telling me to come down to Petsmart and sign for this cat she was going to get me. And I want to tell you I rolled out of bed and pulled on some pants because it is impossible to argue with my mother. But that’s not why I got up, not really.

I met him with a disproportionate amount of fear in my mouth, considering that a sock-footed, pink-nosed, gray-striped tabby cat is not typically a very intimidating sight. And the rest of the story goes the way it has gone every single time an animal needing a home has found its way into my lap.

I woke up this morning with a cat in my armpit, is what I’m telling you: head up under my chin, paws stretched across my chest, butt in the crook of my elbow.

He isn’t Nito, and he isn’t ever going to be Nito. He is just Winston.

I’m realizing all over again, though, that just is more than good enough.

I build the version of you that I love inside of me. I think everyone does, often without knowing it, and they get upset when that inner version disagrees with the truer, fleshier version, which is has the advantage of being incarnate but is, quite frankly, unknowable, unstable, and unpredictable. I get upset, too, like anyone, when I am stung by disappointment or surprised by some mismatch between the working model of you that I carry within me and who you are being, to me, right now.

But even in the worst and most devastating of partings, the consolation prize is incomparably valuable: a new imaginary friend, made out of the best parts of you, that can walk with me for the rest of my days, saying exactly what you would say and doing exactly what you would do, were you ever and always your very best self.

The beauty of you, the things you do well, your areas of mastery: they are mine now. I have not stolen them from you, but I have copied them over months and years, and I will faithfully keep them on file.

I know the joke you would make, here, and it makes me laugh. I know the advice you would give, here, and it calms me. I stand up for what’s right and you agree with me, and even if no one else can see or hear you, it makes me stronger; it lends me power. Long after you are gone, your companionship remains one of my most treasured possessions. You let me see myself; you keep me company; you remain my true friend.

Regardless of where the real you has gone next, regardless of the harm you will do or the mistakes you will make, you are safe with me, and you are wonderful. I protect you in defiance of the things that are wrong with all of us, the things that we cannot help, and it is an honor to be your steward.

You are the smirk on my face as I walk alone, on the sidewalk. You are the rueful shake of my head when I make that habitual mistake, the one you hated, you know the one, and then I have to laugh, because oh my hell, it drove you nuts. You are the smile around my toothbrush in the morning, punctuating some passing thought that touches down to rest with me for a moment, a welcome visitor, before flitting away again. You are my party anecdote, a man made legend, and deservedly so. I share you, and in that sharing, your past efforts–those valiant efforts that nonetheless could not fix what needed to be fixed–can now at last be made victorious, as a toast, as a punchline, as a celebration.

Loving you has made me more than myself. It has made me us.

And despite my hopeless humanity, I will try, upon our meeting years in the future, to have lived up to those good parts that you kept, so that you can recognize me, the way I promise to recognize you.

In a way, I am heartened by the backlash against the oil spill. In another way, I find it completely hypocritical, at least in those who continue to act as if there is nothing wrong with the way they live their lives.

If you are an American, living as the average American does, then listen: there is already something wrong.

I mean, let’s face it. Being wrong is pretty much your human birthright anywhere.

“Hypocritical” is a loaded and accusatory word that some intelligent part of me is whispering to me that I should not be using, but I’ve endured far too much “fuck you, hippie” backlash from the very same people who are angry at BP right now to feel any other way about it.

For my own hurt feelings and my own frustration, I apologize. I am biased. This is personal. I am struggling emotionally as I write this, and if that causes me to speak too strongly to you, forgive me, because putting you on the defensive is the worst thing I could do. It’s not going to help my cause, and I know it.

I frequently stay silent on this issue, terrified I will be labeled the rude vegetarian, the one with no social skills, the one who compares a meat-eater to Hitler and is then surprised when the entire dinner table does not concede to her viewpoint immediately.

But I promise you that I am less angry than baffled, and less self-righteous than frustrated. Because deep down, I still believe that you would want to be better, if you understood. Deep down, I can’t believe that you really don’t care about what the right thing is or whether environmental issues matter. I don’t hate you. I just don’t understand you, or why we don’t agree. Who are these people who suddenly, in the face of this obvious and difficult-to-ignore oil spill, care so much about animals, about ecosystems, about what happens when greed and pollution infiltrate nature? How are we on the same side now, when they have they been so disrespectful or insulting of my views in the past?

How is it that they will join me in my sadness over the oil spill, yet mock my avoidance of meat–which, as we all have heard a million times, is “tasty, tasty murder”? (Oh, you hilariously original jokesters! So naughty and irreverent! You like animals, too … ON YOUR PLATE!!! Yes, yes, we know.) Are oil-coated birds, who die quickly and at least got to fly around a bit, sadder than cooped-up and languishing chickens with their beaks cut off? Is there really a big enough distinction between these two creatures to decide that the treatment of one is not worth caring about? When does it start to matter to you, what companies will do to animals or the environment to make money?

At least the oil spill was an accident. We throw plenty of pollution into the world on purpose, and some of what you eat was miserable by actual design.

Factory farming causes an unbelievable amount of pollution, among other issues. In fact, eating meat the way most Americans do it (though meat-eating really is not my sole focus here at all) is really, really bad for the environment. Look it up if you don’t believe me. It’s not just being spouted by PETA at this point, and trust me, I hear you on the habitual overenthusiasm of PETA, because I think the Sea-Kitten campaign is possibly one of the silliest things that has ever happened anywhere, apart from the fact that it became viral, which was possibly genius on their part.

The meat thing strikes closest to my heart. That’s obvious. But there are the other issues. Lots of them. Lots and lots of opportunities to be better, and a lot of people aren’t taking any of them, nor do they want to. In fact, they meet other people’s efforts with derision.

And that’s what really kills me. Anytime I reach these heights of frustration, I am not talking about the benignly ignorant, though I do hold people somewhat accountable for seeking out information once they are adults. I am talking about people who actually LOOK DOWN on people who have been trying to make things better. The people who feel so judged by what other people do that they will actually INSULT someone’s effort to live more responsibly, or brag about how little they care about such efforts.

If someone is trying to be vegan, or not drive, or whatever the case may be, they do not deserve your disrespect. If you cannot admire them in their efforts to be better people, at least appreciate that what they are doing is hard, and that they are doing it with good intentions. In other words, your bacon joke was terrifically rude, and your assertion that they are oversensitive blowhards who need to lighten up was completely inappropriate. It’s senseless to hate on them. It might even be a fine idea to contemplate joining them. At the least, I really don’t think it will hurt you to try.

BP, you might contend, is an awful company for ignoring the damage it was doing. But are you paying any attention to the damage you’re doing? Your life comes with it a running toll of waste and pollution. Do you care, or are you rolling your eyes right now, because that is like sooooo not the same?

Why isn’t it the same? Because you can’t see it as easily, or because everyone is guilty of it?

I don’t eat meat. I eschew dairy at home and would like to go completely vegan, and I take responsibility for the fact that I am not, yet, not when I’m eating out and am presented with a choice between a boring non-filling salad and something vegetabley with cheese on it. I use environmentally friendly products when I can. I’m researching bicycles and Zipcar in an effort to go carless in the future. I am not telling you this because I think I am singlehandedly saving the world or because I think I am some kind of saint for doing these things. The truth is quite the opposite: I still have so much blood on my hands that even contemplating it is an exercise in despair that I try to avoid. I could be better. I could be so much better. I know this. I’m not speaking as someone who has it all figured out, as someone who thinks she is good at this. I am not good at this. The air conditioner is running in my apartment right now, and there’s nothing necessary about that.

But I do care, and I struggle to be better, to keep turning that air-conditioning knob down another notch. Why be hateful about that or flat-out refuse to consider joining me in any way? Is it such a blow to your ego to admit that you could be better? Is it so hard to admit imperfection?

If you are angry that BP was cavalier about the oil spill, I can understand that. I absolutely can. What I cannot understand is why you fail to apply those same standards to yourself. What I cannot understand is why you think caring about this stuff makes me worthy of mocking as an overemotional and irrational blowhard. Hey, global warming scientists: lighten up, would you? Can’t you take a joke? And by joke we mean hole in the ozone layer.

I am not asking you to be perfect. I am not asking you to eat vegan at every meal or sell your car tomorrow. What I am asking you to do is try. To take a deep breath, release that instinctive desire to be stubborn, look around at your life, and make some effort, somewhere, to be better. I am asking you to care about all of the smaller things, the hidden things, the way you care about this oil spill that won’t allow you to pretend it doesn’t exist. I am just asking you to try. And if you cannot, I am asking you to, at the very least, shut up and let me try.

My hope, though, is that if you put down your defensive armor for a second, you will realize that you can do so much more than that.

I am not speaking because I am angry. Plenty of things that make me angry never make it to this blog, because, really: what’s it going to accomplish? No. The truth, the vulnerable and possibly pitiful truth, is that I am speaking because, deep down, I still believe, and I probably always will.

Tell me something.

Not about anyone famous. Not about television shows–monosyllabic, acronymic, or otherwise. Not about anything everyone has read.

Not about what will stick to your thighs, not about the bad thing that you love. Not about bacon, not about wine. Not about how unrepentantly naughty you are or have been, in that incident, with all the cookies. Not about your false guilt or your mock repentance.

Not about how stupid you are. Not about your adorable, flailing impotence in the world that surrounds you. Not about your weakness or flaw made haplessly endearing. Not about what you don’t know how to do. Not about what you can’t do. Not about who you will never be.

Not about everything you haven’t done. Not about impossible goals you set for the pleasure of setting them, for fantasizing about what it would be like, were those goals in any way relevant to your actual future. Not about how you have failed, unless you learned something (in which case, speak, I implore you!).

Not about that feminine brand of ruefulness that has never stopped anyone from committing the same crime again, tomorrow.

Not about where else you are writing. Not about the paid project you are doing. Not about anything a department store or children’s snack company or any other commercial enterprise has compensated you for writing about.

Not about what you bought, unless you truly love it. Not about what I should buy, unless it will change my life. Not about a brooch or a candleholder or a pair of earrings or anything else you never needed to be happy. Not about shoes. Not about dresses.

Not about your bangs. Not about your pores.

Not about how you are right. Not about who wronged you and how. Not about why you are the better half, the better sister, the better mother. Not about why you deserve more. Not about your bad luck or your cursed life. Not about your annoying boss, your crappy co-worker, your evil ex-husband. Not about victimhood. Not about hate. Not about your resentment of these strange responsibilities that have become yours in a way that you do not understand. Not about what you are owed.

Not about pregnancy. Not about labor. Not about diapers. Not about breastfeeding. Not about how much sleep you got. Not about fevers. Not about vomit. Not about teeth bursting through gums.

Not about your pet. Not about what is cute.

Not about your date. Not about your boyfriend. Not about your diamond. Not about your invitations. Not about your dress. Not about your ceremony. Not about your love. Not about your divorce. Not about your custody agreement. Not about your court date. Not about your child support.

Not about your house. Not about your countertops. Not about your patio, your drywall, your fireplace. Not about your Dyson or your Swiffer, not this time.

About what’s left, whatever that is, for you, large or small. About what I could never guess, maybe, or what I don’t know. About your expertise in something odd. About something small, but unusual. About what you’ve learned. About a crazy little piece of poorly known history. About something strange you will never forget, about a memory that falls outside of our collective. About a fact that fascinates you. About a horrible travesty. About a miracle. About a discovery. About a cause. About the world.

About what’s going on. About something you are doing to make things better. About what I can do to help.

About anything, really, as long as it is not everything else.

Later, if you want to, you can do the easy thing. You can mock your little boobs and your big butt. You can mock a celebrity’s anorexia or plastic surgery or cocaine habit. You can joke about how you can’t parallel park. You can drool over material things. You can fret over the furrow slowly emerging between your eyebrows. You can act as if your choice of granite for the kitchen island will make or break your well-being and is the biggest dilemma anyone has ever encountered. I know I certainly will.

But for now, just tell me something new, something much smaller than all of that or much larger than all of that, if you can. Say it here, or say it elsewhere. If you have already said it, or if someone else did, and there is a place I can find it, please tell me where.

I’m sorry to ask. It’s not your job, I know.

But if you would indulge me, I promise to listen closely, and with gratitude.

My favorite post, though, is this one, about calming yourself and carrying on, one step at a time.

a) Like animals? I LOVE animals!

b) I’m an asshole.

***

2. Do you support yourself?

a) I like to think of myself as a professional live-with-my-mom-er. The pay sucks, but the fringe benefits include meatloaf and also never having to take any responsibility for myself ever.

b) Yes. Duh. I’m an adult.

c) I will be happy to support myself just as soon as I find a way to magically make work not suck. (This is not to say I’m not industrious–I have nine graduate degrees! So far!)

d) I do support myself, but it’s terrible. Like, we’re talking “coal mines” terrible, except more memos and less dying of black lung. My job is like being stuffed into an iron maiden that has been doused in lemon juice and then salted for maximum sting, and then having the door slammed on me again and again and again and again. The only silver lining to any of this is that it makes for absolutely fascinating dinner conversation. You’re welcome.

***

3. What are your flaws?

a) The only flaw I can think of is that I am sometimes followed around my bathroom by a man who looks like me and mimics my every behavior. He even brushes his teeth at the same time that I do. It’s really weird. Anyway, other than that, I guess I hadn’t really given my flaws much thought before.

b) My biggest flaw is that I suffer from an all-consuming fetish for crazy cat ladies.

c) My main flaw is that I am very sensitive about my flaws, okay? Are you happy now?

d) My parole officer says it doesn’t count as a flaw anymore if you’re already paid your debt to society.

***

4. I’m extremely absentminded and forgetful. Can you cope with that?

a) That incident where you forgot something is already forgotten by me in turn, on account of you being so damned brilliant. Not to mention pretty. Let’s make out.

b) Not only can I cope with that, but I am full of helpful and very earnest suggestions. For instance, did you know that you could hang your keys on a hook? Or use a day planner to schedule your daily activities? Or, I know! I will just cheerfully supervise to make sure you don’t screw up. Does your pained expression mean that you are uncomfortably turned on right now? I suppose that patronization IS sexy, now that I stop and think about it. C’mere, you.

c) I can’t answer this question because I’m too busy seething with resentment about the fact that we are twenty minutes late to dinner because you managed to lose your left shoe while traversing the seven feet between your front door and the car–even though you were wearing it at the time. I mean what the FUCK.

***

5. What are your feelings on children?

a) I should have named my twin girls Lub and Dup, because when you have kids, your heart really does walk around outside of your body. I never knew love until I had those children. Nor did I do anything else of significance that I can remember.

b) I enjoy other people’s children … sort of. In theory. When we aren’t on an airplane. Or in the grocery store. Or on vacation. Or trying to accomplish anything. Actually, if that kid over there says “Mom? Mom? Mom? Mom?” one more time and receives no answer, I will pay you fifty dollars to give me a salad-tong vasectomy right here in this restaurant.

c) I owe the world my children; it would be downright cruel to deny humanity my genetic material. What kind of lazy, selfish slacker doesn’t reproduce?

d) I rarely even think about children unless I actually trip over one when I’m sprinting toward the ice-cream truck. Bomb Pops are the best.

***

6. How would you describe your political stance?

a) Coincidentally enough, I am single in the first place because the homosexual agenda destroyed my American family in particular.

b) I’m actually very well informed in politics and I know exactly what everyone in Washington is doing wrong. I’d be happy to outline all of it for you just as soon as I’ve finished telling you how terrible my job is. You aren’t in a hurry to get home or anything, are you?

c) I wish we would nuke almost everyone else in the world and then bring back the electric chair in case there are any survivors.

d) I find it baffling that both the rights of the individual and the will of the majority are cited as the logical basis of decisionmaking in our government, which doesn’t actually make that much sense, as the two become mutually exclusive quite frequently. For the most part it hurts my head, but I generally don’t feel the need to be the boss of everyone and wouldn’t have voted in favor of Prop 8, if that’s what you’re asking.

***

7. Is it important to you that we live together/get married?

a) This conversation is already hurting my feelings.

b) Yes, desperately important and all I have ever wanted, but the fact that you are the first girl I’ve met who doesn’t want me to buy her a diamond actually fuels my infatuation with you and is, in fact, the only reason I’ve kept you around this long. Whatever you do, don’t give in, no matter how much I beg. Speaking of which … can we move in together yet? God it’s so hot when you break my heart like this.

c) Not really, no.

***

8. Are you happy?

a) No, but I can tell from your whimsical manner and joie de vivre that you could help me get there by taking me by the hand and leading me on a journey of self-discovery that will ultimately reveal the magic of the world around me, just like Natalie Portman in Garden State. Good grief, it’s about TIME that sort of thing happened in real life.

b) We all have our days, but most of the time, yes, I am.

c) Yes, but then again, I’m on a lot of drugs. No … like … a lot of drugs.

d) No … but in my defense, I am cursed. Judging from a wealth of empirical evidence, my fate is to wade through an endless stream of petty inconveniences designed specifically to obliterate any chance I might have had at experiencing joy or contentment. My existence is one continuous Nerf dart to the face. Do not get me started on papercuts.

***

9. Has life humbled you yet?

a) Of course life has humbled me. Nobody does humble like I do humble. I’m probably the humblest person you’re ever going to meet. Just the other day, I was probably more aware of my flaws and my insignificance in the scheme of things than anyone else. I make a point of winning at humble because otherwise someone might get confused and mistake me for a raging egomaniac.

b) Is this hearty burst of rueful laughter enough of an answer for you?

c) No, but that makes sense when you take into account that I am really, really special. Would my mom have spent so much time cutting all the crusts off my sandwiches if I weren’t? EXACTLY. Anyway, don’t take my word for it–the quality of the novel I’m writing will speak for itself. It’s about an underappreciated protagonist whose above-average attributes are finally recognized and validated with fame and fortune.

***

10. Hmm … you actually seem pretty awesome so far. Uh oh … are you crazy?

a) Shhhh. They can hear you … they can ALWAYS hear you.

b) I’m crazy for you, baby–like the Madonna song, if the Madonna song had been about stalking. Are you even getting these answers? I’d better resend them fourteen times just in case your comment form was on the fritz or your computer screen had been smashed in a jealous rage.

c) Yes, but as soon as I get rich, I’ll just be “eccentric.” The good news is, I can still be “charming” in the meantime.

d) No … but I’m kind of boring, it turns out. Whoops.

***
YOUR SCORE
1-3: Don’t date anyone.
4-6: Don’t date me or my friends.
7-9: Don’t date me.
10: You’re such a liar.

The only thing I disagree with philosophically is that I’ve never felt that thank-you cards are necessary. I have never had a problem accepting a heartfelt thank-you offered in person or a sincere e-mail of gratitude; I don’t think we need to spend money or kill trees just to say that we appreciate what someone has done for us. Thank-you cards are nice, too, of course, but I don’t know that I would have a very high opinion of a friend who sits around thinking about how my expression of thanks wasn’t good enough for them.

I love the rest of it, though, especially #6, #14, #15, and #19. Well said.

I don’t know that I’ve ever been as overcome with deja vu as I was when we walked down the jetbridge together, toward our plane. I don’t know how to explain the certainty of that moment, the certainty I have always felt at that moment when we receive our boarding passes and fall into step together, our luggage rolling into alignment behind us to form a rumbling procession, but I will try: it felt less like what we used to do and more like who we had always been. It didn’t feel nostalgic, but it did feel profoundly true. It felt like that little bit of home that you recognize even more readily when you are exploring somewhere else entirely.

This isn’t to say that we don’t experience the occasional culture shock. “I feel like I’m on the wrong side of the bed,” Jeff joked from his side of the room as we were falling asleep; he had always slept on my right, and we had accidentally claimed our beds backward. Likewise, when he is at my elbow, I am embarrassed to admit that I sometimes forget to pay for little things that I’m buying, like my own latte; he was always the one who carried our money.

Mostly, though, we just laugh, because if you don’t insist on getting all schmaltzy about it, it really is sort of funny, the way everything is the same and yet not at all the same, in this foreign country we find ourselves navigating.

Here is the thing I feel strange admitting in a culture hellbent on convincing everyone that divorce is some kind of cultural poison: I love having an ex-husband. It’s a shame I don’t have several more of them, really, in case the first one is too busy to go out to dinner or one of them gets hit by a bus or something, or maybe we just decide we want to play a more complex round of Monopoly than two people can allow for.

(Though, I suppose if I had several, I would have to change my plans to get a “#1 Ex-Husband” mug made for Jeff for his birthday, which would be a shame, because I think he’s going to get a kick out of it.)

Sometimes I don’t see him for months, but when I do, he always knows what sorts of restaurants I will like and which movies I’ll want to see. Awhile ago, we stood out in the cold so he could teach me to change my car headlight, and I met him at the coffee shop a few weeks ago to help him write a letter. He kept borrowing my snowboard, so eventually I just gave it to him; we’ve passed our DLP projector back and forth a few times now, depending on which of us is less busy and more in the mood to watch movies. I’ve told him he can have my car when I get around to getting another one (he still has the keys, and has been known to re-park it in the event that he sees a space closer to my door, which is nice except when it makes me feel as if I am going senile), and if/when I sell my book, some of that money (all four dollars of it) will be his, for supporting me as avidly as he did, both emotionally and financially, while I wrote most of it.

I married very well, it turns out. I am even more sure of that now that it’s over.

People tell me that what we claim to be doing is impossible–that we either did not have big enough problems from the outset or that we have not yet moved on romantically. “Oh, just wait until one of you remarries,” they say, because God forbid we all avoid getting ahead of ourselves and just enjoy some good news for once. (He has a girlfriendish who has far more claim to him than I do at this point, and I would totally go to his next wedding, if he would have me. My love life is even more complicated; frankly, Jeff is the simplest and most platonic thing in it.) There must be some reason, they contend, that we have been spared from animosity or estrangement, and obviously it is through no effort of our own. They list all the reasons that most people could not do what we have done, and they question whether our divorce was even necessary in the first place, forcing me to either explain to them in detail all of the awful things that Jeff and I have done to each other or endure the destruction of my credibility.

And you know what? I think people need to stop it, for their own sake. I think they need to stop assuming that it isn’t possible and start finding ways to make it possible, because not only is divorce not going away, but divorce is not even the problem, or at least it doesn’t necessarily have to be. I am not the only one in the history of divorce to feel that way–nor are such positive outcomes reserved for the childless. Jeff’s parents, for instance, used to move in and out of the family home every six months so that their children wouldn’t have to, and they remain friendly to this day. I grew up living up the street from duplex families who had mommies on the first floor and daddies on the second floor.

Can it always be done? Of course not; it takes two (and sometimes more than two, if new girlfriends and boyfriends and wives and husbands are involved). But I do think that, as a society, we need to learn to divorce better, because staying married is sort of like staying abstinent: the best solution is not the best solution at all if it routinely fails to happen, so perhaps we should stop acting as if life has to be so goddamned ideal all the time and start working with what we have.

Should you ever find yourself ending your marriage, I encourage you to draw solace from the manner in which various people console you. Many married people reacted to my situation with horror; what was happening to me was their worst-case scenario, romantically speaking–their monster under the bed. The smartest and coolest divorced people I know, on the other hand, were both more sympathetic and much less alarmed on my behalf. They didn’t say it, because they didn’t want to patronize me or minimize my pain, but if I had paid attention, I would have seen that, deep down, they never had any doubt that I would be fine, if I wanted to be.

Who are you going to listen to: the well-intentioned but inexperienced people who have never been through it and are nearly panicking on your behalf regarding everything miserable you will surely be required to endure, according to their imagined version of how awful divorce must be, or the people who have been there–the ones who reassure you calmly, discuss the situation without theatrics, and treat your eventual healing as a foregone conclusion, as if you are merely suffering one really epic zinger of a scraped knee?

If you have decided to listen to the latter, and you need to hear it one more time, I am ready to pass along that message, because it’s true: divorce happens, and it can’t erase you, and you will be fine, if you want to be.

This whole thing, this entire trip, has been so us. This is us, this exchange of gleeful expressions while we strap ourselves in. This is us, this passing back and forth across the aisle of headphones, powerbars, sweatshirts, and everything else we share as communal property in an unconscious habit ten years in the making. This is us, this tandem head-scratching over coins and rail passes and signs lettered in a foreign language. We stop, we lean in, we contemplate, we figure it out, and we keep going.

“You Are Here,” the maps tell us, and it’s true: we still are.