Issue #13 - Best and worst
There are good bits as well as bad bits about the end of my marriage + a NEW RECIPE which hits the spot on both good days AND bad days ♡
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Hello lovely people,
How are things in your corner of the world? Here in Dubai, we’re on the cusp of winter which means a break from months of obscenely hot, revolting weather and the chance to dip into my scarf collection (oh how I love a scarf ♡).
My godmother and her family play a dinner table game called ‘Best and Worst’. It’s a simple premise; once everyone is seated and ready to eat, someone goes first and shares the best part and the worst part of their day. It can be something insignificant or something huge - the only rule is that nobody can say that their best (or worst!) is ‘right now, being here with all of you’ because that is a major cop-out! Sometimes there are three generations of the family present plus visiting guests and it’s a tradition that I love. Everyone gets the chance to have their moment and it’s mostly fairly rapid-fire so that the important job of eating dinner is not disrupted. It’s a conversation starter; it’s a peek into everyone’s days; it’s a glimpse into the range of things that might constitute the best and worst for each of us. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not making this game into something deeper than it is but I do think it’s a wonderful sweet spot between fun and insightful.
Today I had planned to write about the worst parts of the end of my marriage but in the spirit of not wanting to sour your day and inspired by my memories of ‘Best and Worst’ I decided to temper my reflections by including some of the best parts of the break up - because they do exist; really they do. It feels likely that the worsts mostly come first, so let’s start there. As always, I hope what I share might be useful in your own life. Take what you like, share what you love and leave behind the rest. ♡
Firstly, the past … there is much that is painful about the end of a long or significant relationship – especially when it is thrust upon you. There is anger and resentment; there is possibly fear, but there is also that feeling of being robbed – robbed of a past that was, in my case, at times ‘joyous’, sometimes ‘dull’, mostly ‘great’ but always ‘good enough’. That history is literally everything that memories are made of; the jigsaw puzzle of life to date where every piece represents a snippet of the journey that was taken together to reach today.
Of course, that story and those memories still exist but I’m sure I’m not alone in now viewing them afresh through a more cynical lens that, quite frankly, sucks out most of the goodness found within. To be fair, in good times, we probably do the opposite; applying our own version of a rose-tinted, nostalgic filter to our past life and wiping out the day-to-day bugbears and the less-than-romantic debates about whose turn it is to empty the dishwasher. I tell myself that making my relationship memories harder to access, is an act of self-preservation and I am a fan of that. I’m no neuroscientist but I wonder also if my brain is helping here; getting stuck into the heavy responsibility of protecting me from the pain of too much obsessive analysis of detail that is almost certainly not even an accurate recollection of the past.
Reminiscing with my children – My past is about more than my marriage and so focusing on the wider family memories keeps me on a positive path. I must watch myself so that I don’t become an overly sentimental nostalgia junkie (because no teenagers/young adults would appreciate that) but sharing photos that pop up and recalling cute and funny moments feels good. To be honest, I struggle with those moments when something triggers a memory that only my ex-husband would recall but I’ve tried hard to take what I want from it and then let it fly.
Replacing the ‘one big, happy family’ photos dotted around the house with alternatives that allow me to focus on what I have, rather than what I have lost - It took me ages to do this, and I have found it to be a game-changer. And the process of swapping out the photos and inserting new ones was surprisingly cathartic.
Will I be able to access more of the memories of my married life in the future when there’s increased distance involved? Maybe, but for now, I’m more focused on creating new ones. So, on the one hand, yes, I WAS robbed, but perhaps hitting MUTE on the historical details that might invite me to spend too much time looking backwards is a positive for boldly moving forwards into a reimagined future. After all, what is the point in looking back; I’m not going that way…
But what of the future? In many ways, I have felt as though I was also robbed of a future. Nothing in our future was ever set in stone but, crucially, the uncertain aspects felt thrilling when the adventure was as part of a couple. A solo voyage into an unknown future is something different entirely.
In the early days of separation, I noticed that when I tried to picture a new future, I could see only a huge, black void of nothing. I am a very visual person; I like to be able to picture things and to see myself in the future that I am imagining, but that’s hard when it’s so dark and empty that I feel blind. I was sleeping badly at the time, so I spent many wakeful night-time hours reading. My head was not in a place to embrace anything too heavy but I started to read (mostly) fiction about women who were reimagining their lives. These reads were not necessarily life-changing literary works but through them, I slowly started to identify pieces of a future that felt good. Mostly the characters were in scenarios very different to my own but I chose the parts that I liked, learned from the parts that I didn’t and moved on to the next one. At the time, I suspect that I didn’t even realise what I was doing, but looking back it was like slowly turning on the light to illuminate my future.
These are the books that I read -
Ugh, this is a horrible one and for reasons of timing in my journey is not a topic that I will talk much about here. I will say, however, that knowledge is so much better than ignorance and also that understanding all the details of your finances is always a powerful position.
Tracking every part of my expenditure for total clarity - lots of small things add up to something bigger so I try not to overlook anything. I’m a fan of an EXCEL spreadsheet particularly for managing cash flow.
Reaching out for help when I needed it - for all aspects of your finances, there will be someone who is happy to sit with you and share what they know. This is the time to lean on knowledgeable friends and their spouses for advice and good contacts (should you need a second opinion or the input of a professional).
The end of my marriage felt as though I was suddenly alone and this feeling has appeared in so many parts of my journey. There is a deep and almost visceral loneliness that comes from being a sole player rather than a team member and there have been times that I have found this paralysing. Those moments when I’ve needed to make big decisions alone have been tough but also not having someone with whom to discuss the day-to-day minutiae and laugh over shared memories has been difficult.
Finding a new team - over time I have grown a new team of friends and family members who have helped me in so many ways. Not only have they assisted in filling the voids but they have been so useful in the detail of building a new life. It serves as a welcome reminder to me that we can never get everything that we need from one person and that our team can grow to be so rich and diverse that we wonder how we ever managed without it.
You know the ones that I mean … Like the time I had to dispose of the body of the bird that had smashed into the window and lay dead outside; the day that a mouse nonchalantly strolled across the kitchen floor practically looking over its shoulder as if to say, ‘Catch me if you can …’; the morning when the smell in the kitchen was so pungent that I became convinced that the same mouse had curled up and (inconveniently) died behind a cupboard (Reader - the smell turned out to be a rancid, liquid potato that had gone unnoticed for way, way too long! Who knew that a vegetable could smell so bad? FYI, removing a gloopy, liquid vegetable may in fact be worse than disposing of a dead rodent …). I’d previously managed to swerve these jobs. That was no longer an option. And there’s not much that helps here apart from sucking it up and getting on with it!
The ultimate ‘best’ for me has been the special bonds with friends and family that have grown and deepened while I navigated this journey of separation. In my marriage, I focussed most of my time and energy on that one person and now it feels as though a whole new world has opened up. These people have been by my side at my most vulnerable and from that vulnerability comes depth and breadth of connection. Interestingly, I feel that I am also now more equipped to be a better Mum, daughter, sister and friend; and I like that. Something precious has flourished from within the sadness.
This feels loaded because it’s also at the core of some of my ‘worsts’ and yet there are moments when a whole new future feels like the most thrilling opportunity ever. Of course, a reimagined future is open to everyone at all life stages but I suspect most of us need one hell of a nudge to make it happen, when safety and familiarity is the alternative. I do believe that the best is yet to come but that doesn’t stop me from having wobble after wobble as I navigate the journey. One small step at a time - that feels like the mantra for now.
It’s maybe not terribly exciting but I do love being able to turn the light on in the middle of the night and to starfish across the full width of the bed without hesitation. These things might seem insignificant but they are some of the joys of a single life that I’m trying to appreciate.
Shallow? Yes. Joyous? Absolutely!
And just like in the dinner table family game, noticing the ‘bests' doesn’t magically make the ‘worsts’ disappear or even reduce their hurt or intensity. Rather the ‘bests’ carry the potential to act as a reminder that where there’s dark, there’s also light but (and it’s a BIG ‘but’), we do have to be careful that we don’t blink and miss the signs of light. Also, I’m living proof that something that once felt like a ‘worst’ and felt so HUGE and important that it was utterly engulfing, can diminish over time. Really it can.
Let’s keep our eyes open for the ‘bests’ in this and in all parts of our lives. I wonder if we can wear a positive attitude like an empowering suit of armour - it doesn’t make the hurt go away but it can be such an enormous help in powering our onward journey and lifting us up through the bad days.♡
And, in case you were wondering, today my BEST was snagging the ultimate parking space at the supermarket (you know the one - right by the door, right by the trolley park, drive straight in - BINGO) and my WORST? Well, when the bottom of my shopping bag split and a large bag of tomato pasta sauce smashed all over the kitchen floor and up the cupboard doors and over my (once white) trainers and my favourite cream jeans. There were expletives; many of them!
There is so much to love about this delicious, comforting pasta not least that you will be slurping and scraping the tasty, velvety sauce from the bottom of your bowl! This ‘Soupy’ Sundried Tomato Pasta is the sweet spot between a cosy soup and a pasta dish that feels a bit more elegant than usual. And most importantly, it’s the tastiest way to mope through a ‘worst’ or to celebrate a ‘best’. I’m certain that you will love it and you can find the recipe here. Do let me know what you think …♡
I would love to hear your comments (and your ‘best and worst’!). The things that we share here might be exactly what someone else needs to hear. You can join the conversation by commenting below or you can get straight into my inbox by emailing me at rachelpage@substack.com.
I hope that there has been something useful, inspiring or ridiculously tasty here for you today. ♡
Sending you all the hugs,
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