Looking Back

I'm at work, cataloging a book called Not Your Mother's Divorce: A Practical, Girlfriend-to-Girlfriend Guide to Surviving the End of an Early Marriage.

What does "surviving" mean? What does "early" mean?

I just got an email message from my friend Eric. I've known him since 4th grade. I had a crush on him off-and-on through junior high and high school, and through college, too. We stayed in contact all that time even though we didn't really have all that much in common. He grew up as an only child with money. His birthday's a year and 15 days before mine but we graduated the same year. His mom was a kindergarten teacher and she kept him home until he was 6 because she wanted more time with him at home - she always said she would be lonely without him. (Did that just mean he wasn't ready for school, but she was diplomatic?) Now he's a cop in our hometown, married to Amy. She graduated a year after we did, two years after her sister Sara, with whom I was good friends through high school. They also have a younger brother, Josh, who's now probably 29. Eric's message was in response to my Christmas card, letting me know what's new with them. Amy and Eric just had a baby, a son, on December 21. And Josh started working for the police dept. in our hometown, too. I'm not sure which makes me more sad, or affects me more. I don't want to have kids, but the fact that more of my friends are - and of course the fact that Eric did, after all this time, and with Amy (to whom he's been married for several years, and for whom I'm really, really happy) is complicated and sort of difficult but basically a good thing. But thinking about Josh makes me feel like half of my chest is gone, like a lung's been ripped out and I'm bleeding. It's trite to say he's 'the one that got away' since anyone who knows me has heard that story about more than just Josh. But he was something different to me. He is, for me, what Nick Earls was writing about in Perfect Skin: “It’s the shadow I’m standing in, a rock I can’t push past.” Is it better to know where he is? Is it better, at least, than when he was in the Marines and I could just imagine him risking getting his head blown off? Or is it, in this totally selfish way, worse because now if I wanted to, I could find him after ten minutes of searching?

"Surviving the End of an Early Marriage" - huh.