Went to dinner last night at a friend’s house, out here in medium plafond suburbia.
Now, ya’ll have to understand, these were originally Mr. Magnolia’s friends. The social circle I married into, not chose for myself. And they are lovely people (please do not get me wrong here at all, I genuinely care about them and enjoy being with them), but like everyone, they are human and love a good story.
And boy is everyone is terribly curious as to ‘what really happened’ to me and Mr. Magnolia. I am doing my best not to give much away.
Its just nobody’s business for starters. But sitting there at dinner I was trying in vain to explain that I didn’t leave him because I didn’t love him anymore.
Quite the opposite.
I still love the guy. Burns me the hell up, but I do.
But love isn’t everything in a marriage. Love gets you to the altar, but marriage is about being a team and more importantly, its about living and changing.
And I think, that inability to change, that massive rut we got stuck in, turned into me feeling like a caged bird and him like my keeper.
It felt like all my ideas (and I also seemed to be the only one with the ideas which gets exhausting after a spell) were constantly being shot down…. as the school fees got bigger and that big executive job less satisfying, our lives became more about what we couldn’t do because we were parents, because we had a mortgage, because, because, because, because…
Because is not a good reason.
How do you explain, should you explain to your friends that that’s what killed it in the end? That when the going got really, really rough last summer and I thought half crippled with back pain, let’s move house, sail around the world with the boys while they’re still young enough, let’s shake it up and find each other again, he wouldn’t go with me.
And that’s the thing.
Was it all just too scary to leave leafy old suburbia and try something so different?
What would our friends say? Our parents? What if we took that big chance and we still ended up divorcing? Well, I think it would have been worth it either way. But that’s me. That’s the woman that moved half way round the world to be with Mr. Magnolia in the first place all those years ago.
Who knows, maybe he knew my heart was in the ideas and I did believe that a change like that could give us a second chance.
But then again, maybe deep, deep down he knew this girl too well.
Maybe he knew that two years ago in the Bahamas when I told him I couldn’t live like we were for another 40 years, maybe he knew we were done. I’ll never know because he’ll never tell me, not now. God only knows.
But he never got it, no matter how many times I said it or cried it or screamed it, I never would have gone looking for a 23 year old if we had taken better care of our marriage.
We had to part because we didn’t see life the same way. Life, and if marriage is part of your life, it should be about possibilities, not limitations.
About sailing around the world.
Listening to your gut.
Knowing and trusting your soul when it moves you.
Learning from what you’ve done and doing more with your life, more and better.
That you want the rest of your life and the lives of your children to be about the we can, not the we can’t, about the stars, not jus the school run.
Its about taking chances.
So, do you tell your ‘social friends’ this? Nah, they don’t need to know and hell, the probably won’t get it anyway.
Wait a sec, that is too cynical! What if, what if they are already doing the love plus teamwork thing? Now that is a nice idea to go into August with ain’t it?
Dammit, Mr. Magnolia and I could have done so much more together. But hopefully we’ll both learn from this. I have and continue to.
Anyway, ya’ll have a great August. Me and the Toeheads, we’re off to the Redneck Riviera.
Can’t wait to eat some grits, some fried chicken and get a sunburn.
Ms. Magnolia
