Peeing in broad daylight in the lay-by on the M4 - a Divorce Narrative
The long and panful legacy of walking out on a marriage and putting your happiness first.
Last night I went to a clothes swap party with a bunch of lovely women, one of which is my closest friend here in Bristol. I was picked up by another friend in her enormous Volvo SUV, and she drove the three of us there, with our big bags of clothes to donate taking up space on the leather back seat next to me. I will return to this SUV and its significance later in the piece, but for now, a little on the clothes swap concept.
It is the second clothes swap I have been to with this same group of women. It’s a warm hospitable event, utterly female, with food and Prosecco (or Prosecco Zero, which I drank because Dry January is quite easily slipping into dry February). Everyone brings and exchanges clothes, which are hung and draped on every surface and corner. There are a set of rules: you get to browse but not try on, then by the sound of a bell you can hover in the area where there are clothes that you like. You then try them on, and can take them home unless someone else desperately wants them, too. Then it’s time to negotiate (this hasn’t happened yet as everyone is very polite). After the first party I went to, I returned home with a few skirts and a fancy bra. One of the skirts was from Gap and was swishy, and the other was a cotton tube skirt which reminded me of my rockabilly days when I hung out on the Kings Road, and wore a black tube skirt, beetle-crushers, a bomber jacket, my fringe backcombed and sprayed until it stuck up on its own, which frankly made me look like Mr Tefal.
Last night there was nothing I really wanted, so I sat back and watched.
But this post is not so much about the clothes swap party, as it is about women’s lives and the internal voices that convince us of a truth, which is more likely influenced by societal ideas of how we should be and what should make us happy. It is also about what Mary Karr calls ‘the noticing self’’.
I don’t know all the women on intimate terms, but I know they all have children of a similar age to mine. I know also that that the majority of them are still in their marriages or with their partners that they had children with. Although divorce rates in the US are 40-50%, it is still the norm in the UK for couples to stick with it; the majority stay together. And having left my marriage some ten years ago, I have acutely felt the minority since I moved from London to Bristol.
I don’t know if I would feel differently if I’d stayed back in Hackney - would more of my friends have taken the leap? But I do remember having a rude awakening at a party soon after I moved here, when I casually dropped into conversation with a mother from my kids school that I was divorced… and the woman flushed red and looked away, searching for a way to escape, as if I was suffering from divorce-itis, highly infectious. She abandoned me. I slung my hands behind my back. I walked to the bar, thought of ordering myself a solitary drink. I wondered if I should go home. Did I become a little bit more guarded after this experience? It definitely made me stop and think.