The middle of the bed

Tag: grief

  • The Biggest Loser

    The story of how I came to be sobbing uncontrollably at a kids movie with my bemused children squeezed in the kind of hug usually reserved for kidnap victims is one I’ve been wanting to share for a while. But the problem was that unlike lots of stories I’ve told lately, I couldn’t figure out where this one started or how to tell it. 

    Because I guess the truth is, I can’t tell this one without the kind of context usually reserved for midnight DnM’s and wine fuelled girls weekends. These big wet ugly tears weren’t for my obviously bruised heart, they couldn’t be traced neatly back to January and I certainly can’t blame Lilo and Stitch, but maybe I wasn’t ready yet to make it all make sense. 

    Because the truth, like most truths in our lives, is so much more complicated than I was ready to face and certainly far more than I was ready to own.

    The truth is that I have lost and left behind more things over the last 3 years than the 35 years before it and on more days than not, that washes over me in waves that knock the oxygen out of my chest with the kind of force that physically hurts.

    I have become intimately acquainted with loss in a very short time. I have lost 75 kilos and a lifetime of identity with it, I have left behind 2 jobs & teams that I loved and the career trajectory I used to define my worth, I’ve given up my home and moved my family between 2 countries, 3 cities & 9 homes, I’ve lost my best friend and partner of 23 years and the family unit that meant everything to me. I’ve lost close friends that felt like sisters and a brother who was my friend.

    And along the way I’ve lost myself, I’ve lost my shit, I’ve lost most of my ego, half my self confidence, a fair chunk of my naivety, ALL my clothes and any idea what the hell I’m doing half the time.

    This series of losses and passings and changes has washed over me, wave after wave, dunking me under, while I flail about trying to look semi-dignified. Trying desperately not to drown.

    But the Truth I had to face before I could write any of this down is that I dived into this water of losses, blindly but willingly. All by myself. 

    3 years ago I was sitting in a quite suburb I hated, crushed into a faded version of myself under the weight of expectation, boredom and neglect in a life built around everyone but me….. and as I felt myself fading into nothing, I made a choice to start losing things.

    I did one of the bravest things I’ve ever done and had bariatric surgery hoping to lose enough weight to be a healthier, better version of myself. My hopes of losing 30 kilos and being a strong healthy woman with basically no aftermath were almost hilariously short lived. My body apparently didn’t care about my goals, it was going to blow the stats out of the water no matter what the consequences. Within 18 months I was in and out of hospital, less than half the size I started. I could taste starvation, I was scaring the people around me, I was unrecognisable in every way. Stripped down to bones and survival. Loss to the extreme,

    Before I took this step I’d done the research and I knew the statistics around what could go wrong, what I could expect to lose and that one of the most common outcomes of major weight loss is…. Divorce. But still I dove in.

    Shortly after (apparently not content with this level of disturbance) I also decided to pack everything I owned into a container, throw routine and security out the window and move my entire family to thailand for an ‘adventure’. I knew it was disruptive, I knew my exit strategy was weak. But still I dove in.

    At the same time I opened my decades long relationship to make space for exploration for my partner, and eventually discovery for me too. What if he decides he likes someone more than you? Said my friend. ‘Then he should be with them’ I said with my head high and my heart in my throat as I defiantly stared down potentially catastrophic loss and obviously… dove right in.

    Loss has come for me over and over for the last 3 years. The things I knew with arrogant confidence, the plans I had laid out for my life since I was 15, my unshakeable knowledge of what my family will look like, who I am, what I am, what is right, what is right for me. Almost every aspect of my life has had some element stripped away until it feels like there is very little of me left to recognise.

    On one of my very first dates at the ripe old age of 36, an earnest Moroccan tech guy asked me over pizza if I felt I had what it would take to build back the life I have now if I lost it all one day. At the time I was confident I could. That my brain, my family, my drive would be enough to build it back.

    But I have learnt something at the bottom of all this. Just because I could – doesn’t mean I should. 

    The thing with loss it turns out is that sometimes we need it more than we can consciously face.
    Did I have any idea how big an impact that first step would have? Fuck no. Would I take it back? Never.

    I have gained an independence I had embarrassingly little idea I needed, I have had to find new ways to succeed, I have pursued pleasures and experiences in ways that would make that Moonee Ponds Mum blush. I have found myself in a new community with people who have stood with me as each piece of the old me was lost, handing me the tools I needed to uncover the truth of what is left of me. I have fallen in love with someone who saw the truth of me before I could, I have built the foundation of my new family unit the way I know is right for us.

    So when a rather surreal kids movie ended with a chaotic little alien introducing his new little family to someone trying to take him back to where he came from, the waves of grief and guilt and fear subsided a little and I caught my first breath of fresh, clear air.

    “This is my family….I found it all by myself…It’s little and broken…but still good. Yeah, still good.

    And as I squished my innocent popcorn covered children while the credits rolled and the concerned looking mum next to me ushered her children away I could finally forgive the version of myself who so blindly, desperately and bravely dove into those waves 3 years ago. 

    Maybe one day soon, I’ll even thank her.

  • Lasagna

    I once read something that said that the key to divorce was ‘learning to sleep in the middle of the bed’. It was a metaphor that tickled me even when the concept of divorce seemed like an impossibility from the comfort of my very long term relationship. In hindsight, maybe it captured me because subconsciously the thought of centering myself in my own life was incredibly exotic. I started sharing my pocket money and planning life for two at fifteen. I may have been raising my hands like an ‘ independent woman’ on underage nightclub dance floors but I somehow went and lived a life Destinys Child were definitely not singing about.

    Still, I’m a sucker for a shortcut, so in the 10 weeks since my marriage spectacularly and permanently imploded, I have been fixated on learning to sleep in the middle of the bed. I’ve tried just placing one pillow in the middle, I’ve tried trapping myself in with pillows on either side, I’ve meditated with determination on my place and moved myself back into the middle over and over through one sleepless night after another. But still, I wake up, every morning, as I always have, hair as askew as me, on the right hand side of the bed. 

    I’m learning at the moment that there are actually an alarming number of things I assumed I was capable of that it turns out I’m not. It’s quite de-stabilising to learn at 38 that you are in reality only ½ competent, but here I am, learning where the bins go and how to cook rice and where to put water in a car, even though I know how to do our taxes and bake the perfect birthday cake and run a board meeting. 

    The night I realised my relationship was beyond saving I sat alone in an airbnb and ordered lasagna, a desperately needed comfort on the last night of the holiday from hell. In the days after the end a beautiful friend bought a huge lasagna over and it sustained me for days and then weeks as I re-heated tiny frozen portions and felt her care. I haven’t been able to make it though because it turns out, that much like my life, it’s always been a group project. He did the chopping, I made the ragu, he made the bechamel and then I assembled the lasagna we’ve been making side by side for 23 years. It turns out ‘I’ didn’t actually make lasagna ‘We’ did. 

    But it’s rainy today, a dreary flat Saturday at the end of a hard week. My heart is fragile and I’m home on ‘my weekend with the kids’ and my daughter wants lasagna and quite frankly so do I. 

    So, I diced and sauteed and stirred and googled and much like the water and the bins – I figured it out. And now the smell of lasagna is wafting through my home and there’s truffle in the bechamel instead of nutmeg because I love truffle and soon my daughter will decide that actually she doesn’t love lasagna and wants toast, but I don’t care. I’m going to marvel at the lasagna I made by myself and I’m going to share it with my friend who is coming over to check on my heart….

    … and tonight I’m just going to go to sleep on the right hand side of the bed and see where I end up because I mightn’t have the hang of centering myself in my life just yet, but not being able to make a lasagna is not very ‘independent woman’ of me and I’m sure as hell not going to let Beyonce down again.