Relearning Solitude

The post-COVID divorce is as isolating as it sounds

The conundrum of splitting up from a long-term partner in Vegas time—

SUNDAY: "I've decided to have sex with multiple partners. Let's get divorced."

ONE WEEK LATER: "Here's the divorce papers. We're done."

—is that the sudden absence of that partner, that best friend, that reliable and expected presence is savagely ripped out of your life so you are suddenly left alone and need some warm bodies to fill the void but cannot stand more than an hour or two of company.

It sounds horrifying but it would be easier if she'd simply died. I can only write that because she currently lives 25-feet east of the apartment we shared of which I am now the sole occupant. She's right there! Having sex with multiple partners as promised but only just the throw of a soup can away. No, I do not wish her dead. That's ludicrous. It would just be easier for me which, right now, is the thing I'm looking for. Easier for me.

I'm genuinely alone for the first time in eight years and more so because I haven't either had the opportunity or given myself the kick in the ass necessary to establish some roots in the desert. Not lonely. Lonely is something else. Lonely is a road to self persecution and internet conspiracy theories.

I like to take walks around the city in the afternoons when it's blazing hot and dry. I'm past the half century mark by six years and I'm told that walking daily is a healthy thing so I walk. Most of the time I pop in the Air Pods and listen to podcasts or music. Yesterday, I just walked. And talked to myself. The absence of something to fill the silence was bizarre and amazing.

The Japanese proverb is "Fall down seven times, get up eight" but what the Japs don't tell you is that eighth time is fucking harder than the seventh. It's harder than the sum total of energy from the first seven. Gravity and age and a sense of mortality makes that eighth time an almost soul-crunching experience. Sure, I don't take as long as others I've encountered to get up and focus, but it's still a bit rough on the lower back, knees, and bludgeoned optimism.

Up to this point, I've sunk into those two comforts most sought by men my age in similar circumstances: booze and nostalgia. The whiskey is a vice. It puts off the feelings that come in the quiet hours between lying down in the dark to stare into the room and the inevitable moment of getting back out of bed (or off the couch—hell, I'm single, I can sleep anywhere I want). The nostalgia holds a different sort of respite.

Stranger Things. Obi-Wan Kenobi. Cobra Kai. Listening to albums on an iPad performed by Journey, Skynard, Lou Reed, Ozzy, all recorded and fresh when I was a pup looking out and forward into the world. It's a blanket for the fear of the uncertain future. Like the whiskey, it feels good at the moment but leaves you empty and hungover the next morning.

I'm thinking of catching Top Gun: Maverick because what is that but a heaping portion of Nostalgia Porn, a movie recalling the Me of 1984, and seeing Tom Cruise have that 'need for speed' that I can't muster with my crippled heart and beaten spirit? If Maverick can do it, so can I, right?

As I almost aimlessly walk around the Off Strip areas of Las Vegas—passing closed strip clubs, automobile detailing shops, and random office buildings holding who knows what—I notice that an awful lot of the people dying in the world are my age or slightly older. There was a comfort in knowing that if I have a heart attack in my one-bedroom one night, someone would find me before I was too far gone for medical assistance. The image now is of me clutching my chest in the middle of a repeat viewing of Road House, collapsing to the floor, my tumbler of rye soaking the area rug, and dying only to be found three weeks later when the neighbors start complaining about the smell.

In the din of melodramatic posturing come the signals of day-to-day pragmatics. Doubling down on making a living as a writer of words (good luck with that pipe dream). The timing is pretty rotten even for a divorce as I was and am in the beginnings of a career change and she was supposed to cover the bills for the first time in our time together so I had some breathing room. No more breathing room. Gotta hustle. Gotta spread that resume around like a COVID victim refusing to mask or distance. There's rent to pay, gang.

Or not.

As I wrote before, if I want to, I can store my furniture, keep enough remote work churning, and hit the road like Jack Kerouac in a Prius. As my mom tells it, that's avoiding making any decision, and she's likely right. I'm not so nihilistic as to think that nothing matters any more and, while the thought of that heart attack on floor is slightly appealing for the release, I'm not the suicide type. I also like showers and hot coffee and air conditioning so I'm stuck grinding it somewhat for the cash.

A perpetual glutton for punishment or living that Maverick need to test myself, I participated in a book launch of an anthology that she and I both wrote for. It was the first time I'd seen her since her dropping off the divorce papers. I wasn't an asshole but I didn't speak to her or make eye contact. The excerpt she read felt like a weight on my chest and it was a bit of a surprise, having read it at the time, noticing her essay was her way of telling me two years ago that she was done with our marriage.

There's the rub. She moved on long ago and I'm just figuring it all out now.

My mother texted me an excerpt from one of her favorite authors, John O'Donohue, and I've read it almost every morning since:

Stillness is vital to the world of the soul. If as you age you become more still, you will discover that stillness can be a great companion.

The fragments of your life will have time to unify, and the places where your soul-shelter is wounded or broken will have time to knit and heal. You will be able to return to yourself.

In this stillness, you will engage your soul. Many people miss out on themselves completely as they journey through life. They know others, they know places, they know skills, they know their work, but tragically, they do not know themselves at all.

Aging can be a lovely time of ripening when you actually meet yourself, indeed maybe for the first time. There are beautiful lines from T. S. Eliot that say:*

'And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.'

I've never been very good at stillness.

I guess it's time to learn.