Your better angels
Packing a kit for your future divorced self (from 2022)
When you’re newly (and even not-so-newly) separated or divorced, the holidays can be the freakin’ worst. If you have kids too, ‘tis the season for intense guilt or loneliness, logistics and longing, chaotic freedom and hella hangovers, sometimes all in the same weekend.
This essay was first published at the end of 2022, one of the most formative years of my life. I’ll be rerunning a few of my favorite holiday essays as (hopefully) a bit of a lifeline to those of you who are learning for the first or even the third time that the holidays can be hard, hard, hard. You might feel more alone than you’ve felt all year and it feels surprising. You might be missing old traditions, even if you don’t miss your old life. You might not be invited to the same parties, your friends being a casualty of your divorce. You might assume you can just hang with your friends or date your ass off, then discover that your friends and your dates aren’t available because they’re spending time with their families. Trust me, I’ve been there and I get it.
I invite you to get into it in the comments: How are you getting through the holidays? What do you miss? What do you (newly) love? What advice do you need or what advice would you give? What are some of your small (or big) victories in handling the holidays?
Our better angels
A little over a year ago, after Christmas, I bought a Christmas tree. I should say I bought another Christmas tree. We already had two aluminum trees, a 2-footer and a 5-footer. Then there’s the real tree we’d get every year, sometimes cutting it down ourselves. This would’ve been our 4th Christmas tree, a fake white one, brand new in the box.
In addition to the tree I was also seized with an overwhelming compulsion to buy lot after lot of mid-century ornaments made in Japan. I have no idea now what set this off. I’m guessing it was the two little angels I bought at a vintage shop a few years ago, with JAPAN stamped on their bases, and I must’ve wondered huh maybe I could find some more.
NARRATOR: She could find some more.
For a solid month, boxes little and large arrived from all over the country (and world). Some contained just one tiny angel and others, a whole flock. Then I branched out into other Japan-created vintage ornaments: redheads wearing gold lamé and giant snowflakes, small tinsel wreaths with smaller tinsel poinsettias attached, bottle brush trees, and old beaded ornaments. At the end of this spree I made the grave mistake of adding up all the money I had spent on this new tree, the old ornaments, and even more (new) lights and (old) tinsel and garland. I’ll never do that again and by “that” I mean math.
Eleven months later, what had seemed frankly bizarre at the time, turned out to be the best Christmas present I could’ve given myself this year. I hadn’t known when I went on that binge that I’d have a new place, my own place, to decorate by the time Christmas came around again. I realized I had everything I needed, already packed up and clearly labeled, to set up a new tree in my new apartment. I didn’t need to take anything from our house (although there would’ve been plenty to borrow from). I didn’t have to divvy up our family ornaments. That day will come, of course, but thankfully it’s not this year. Thank god it’s not this. friggin’. year.
Realizing I had everything I needed all along is a gift during a transition when it’s so much easier to think about loss instead of what I’ve been seeking — real freedom, a fresh start, an opportunity to live a truer life, surrounded by people I intentionally choose to spend time with instead of compromising and compromising and more than once saying something like, “fine, we’ll invite them, whatever.”
It’s funny, I had actually started a draft of this newsletter back in January, specifically to write about this bizarre purchase. That’s when I took most of these photos, too. But for the life of me I don’t know what the point of that newsletter was supposed to be. All my writing thoughts from January through the end of March are just … gone. Like, gone-gone.
I have no idea what I had planned to write about the angels back then. I do know that “Our lesser angels” was the title. I didn’t have any other notes jotted down. But I can absolutely guarantee it would’ve been a different newsletter than what I have here. It would’ve been a different story entirely.
I’ve written often over the past nine months about the stories we tell ourselves. I’ve believed completely opposing stories about myself, my marriage, and our separation only weeks and even days apart. I know back in January I had a different rationale for hoarding buying all these angels and beads and tiny little cardboard houses. Even with something this seemingly small, this insignificant, the shift in framing can feel disorienting and upsetting, which one was real? Is there such a thing as truth when it comes to the stories we believe, especially about ourselves and our lives? And what is truth anyway? Then suddenly, guess what, you’re in freshman-year-in-the-dorms-stoner-talk land right quick.
This year has been a big, big year of questioning everything I thought I knew and understood about my life, good and bad. As painful as some of that has been — and I try hard to not feel sadness nor regret over the time I’ve lost believing these stories — I’m ultimately grateful for the process. I’m grateful it happened at all. How many people go through life never challenging themselves nor being challenged to see themselves differently? To see their lives differently? To wonder why the fuck did I just buy, like, 43 angels? Anyway, it’s a gift to get another chance at questioning and understanding your life. And not the type of “revisiting” “your” “life” like when three ghosts swing by on Christmas Eve. No thanks.
