Great Ball of Wire

A year ago I began writing a book that’s a departure for me. The story isn’t fantasy. There’s no AI run amok. No one time travels into the past unless you count a few vivid trauma-induced flashbacks.

My new novel is the story of a woman at a crossroads in her life, inspired by my own experience of divorce at age sixty-five.

People often ask how someone can stay married for over forty years and then, poof, decide to leave. Some even look at me like, “Really? After four decades? Couldn’t you just ride it out till one of you keels over?”

But at sixty-five, you start doing the math. My mother lived to ninety-three. That means I could still have twenty or thirty years left. Possibly longer if I can teach myself to tolerate kale. So I asked myself, do I really want to half-ass the rest of my life?

The answer, delivered by a small but mighty epiphany, was no.

The epiphany arrived right after I realized I had an enormous ball of tangled wires inside me. Each wire represented a grievance I’d politely swallowed instead of addressing. Think of it as an emotional hairball, except less cute and more life-threatening.

A sampling:

• Why did I have to hire all the contractors when I know zilch about construction?

• Why couldn’t he pack his own suitcase? And how was it my fault when he left his charger in the hotel room?

• Why couldn’t I cook fish in my own house?

• When did he stop saying thank you?

• Why after forty years did he still have no clue how to run the washer?

• Etc.

Individually, my gripes sounded petty. Together, they formed a ball of resentment so dense it could probably power a small planet, or at least crush a human heart. And that’s what it did. Slowly, drip by drip, it pressed the love right out of mine.

Until I realized the last drip was gone.

Poof. 

If I wasn't in love with him, what on earth was I doing with him?

❤️Margie

More on my new book and my deranged life in next week’s post. If you haven’t signed up for my newsletter yet, what are you waiting for? Grab your free ebook of short stories before they run… oh, who am I kidding, the supply is infinite. Tell your friends! Go to margiebenedict.com and click on Subscribe from the menu bar.