"It was one of those events which at a crucial stage in one's development arrive to challenge and stretch one to the limit of one's ability and beyond, so that thereafter one has a new standard by which to judge oneself.”
—- Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day
If I hadn’t left my husband, yesterday would have been our 22nd anniversary. But I did leave. And there’s no anniversary to celebrate … just a divorce certificate and a memory of a love affair I once thought was written in the stars.
And maybe it was.
But if it was, then it was written for intentional interstellar explosion. A kind of supernova nolo contendere.
There are two types of supernovas, did you know?
The first type is the ginormous “last hurrah” explosion of a single massive star as it gasps its last breath before dying.
The second type of supernova, according to NASA, involves two stars:
“Where two stars orbit one another and at least one of those stars is an Earth-sized white dwarf . If one white dwarf star collides with another or pulls too much matter from its nearby star, the white dwarf can explode.”
I’m not sure who was the white dwarf in my marriage or if maybe we both were, but I know for sure there was a collision, there was a lot the matter, and there was an explosion. Despite our sexy, surprising beginning, despite the falling apart, despite our try and try agains, despite the bottom line truth of many marriages - that we all just want to love and be loved and most of the time we have no clue how to do either — our union spiraled out.
But before we supernova’d into oblivion, for my birthday, about two years into our marriage, we went to Sedona. We did the typical whoo-whoo things that town is known for, including me having a reading with an intuitive/psychic.
She told me that my husband and I were, at that moment in time, intertwined at the “soul level” but, she added, we were walking separate human life paths.”
In the long view back, I think she kind of nailed it. Intertwined like white dwarf stars — drawn almost magnetically together for the sole purpose of later exploding apart.
I do think I was truly meant to meet and “intertwine” — however briefly — with my ex. Truly meant to love him. Marry him. And, perhaps always inevitably, to leave him.
I moved out of his house three years and four months after we married and in that time, I learned some awfully hard lessons. I also finally saw some pretty hard truths about myself, too. Truths that I needed to grapple with and I’m not sure I ever would have if our worlds had not collided.
And it was a good thing.
Because what really matters about that tragic story of two stars who attracted into each other’s field of gravity and then sucked the living life out of each other before they crashed and burned — what really matters — is what remains.
And what remains is the DNA for life and love.
Stars generate the chemical elements needed to make everything in our universe … . At their cores, stars convert simple elements like hydrogen into heavier elements. These heavier elements, such as carbon and nitrogen, are the elements needed for life.
When explosive supernovas happen, stars distribute both stored-up and newly-created elements throughout space. — NASA.gov
What remains from any ending is always the genesis for the next beginning — just like the stardust that remains in the universe after a supernova explodes.
My marriage, the struggle within it, the decision to leave it — the entire experience was as necessary to me as my birth was.
And as necessary as my someday death will be.
I’m not sure everybody needs to have a supernova event in their lives, but I do know this:
We’re put on this planet to plumb the depth and breadth of who we are and who we can be. Our most profound work is to crack ourselves open so completely and thoroughly that we can truly give, receive, and behave with love.
Opportunities — and events — that could crack us open will present themselves by the dozens throughout out short human lives. Most of us will ignore those potentially life-altering moments.
We’ll keep enough distance (emotional, physical, psychological, financial) between our own self-star and the stars of others around us so that we don’t collide, so that we don’t run the risk of exploding, so that we don’t have to do the hard work of real change or loving when we feel threatened or pissed off. We’ll avoid the experience of a supernova, even a minor one, until it’s forced upon us, of course — which inevitably, for us all, at one point or another, it will be.
My own marital supernova exploded the majority of my ability or interest in self-delusion. It’s a hard row to hoe — trying to be real, honest, and intentional — and of course, it’s a row I’ll be hoeing for the rest of my life. But I do think I learned that sometimes, maybe even every so often, we need to blow up our false selves — the facades that so easily fall into place often without our knowing — in order to have a hope in the cosmos of becoming our real selves or experiencing the simplicity and acceptance of real love.
My marriage was a hot mess from beginning to end. Mostly a catalog of harsh words and hurt. But that’s not what matters anymore.
What matters is this:
Once, toward the end of our marriage, after yet another bitter night of fighting, my husband and I had gone to bed, both exhausted, both probably hurting in our own ways. I’d hugged my body along the edge of my side of the bed to be as physically far away from him as I could get. I didn’t imagine sleep would come.
But sleep did come, as it always does. And, hours later, sometime close to dawn, I awoke to find my husband and I were holding hands in our sleep.
If we ever held hands when awake, I don’t remember it. It wasn’t exactly how we rolled.
So, how had we, in our sleep, traversed the space between us and grasped ahold of one another — our bodies achieving something our minds normally could not? Or, did he wake at some point in the night and quietly intertwine his fingers in mine? I don’t recall if I fell back asleep or got up for another heavy-hearted day. I doubt I mentioned it to him either way.
One moment like that couldn’t save our marriage. But when our supernova exploded and everything was smashed to smithereens, what remained was the stardust of that moment — stardust that was flung far and wide and landed who knows where to impart its DNA — of love? of tenderness? of wisdom? — to whatever life it found.
Our supernova was brilliant in its teachings.
And it’s beautiful, really, what remains.
If you still haven’t read Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, what in the world are you waiting for? Or watch the film — it’s actually even better.
I always love your writing, MC. Interesting to hear about your supernova divorce. I’d say that mine was more of a slow fizzle.
That was brilliant. Most people do go thru life without ever having that experience. Thank you for sharing yours.