Why

Yesterday I had the somewhat surreal experience of sitting at a cozy coffee shop in front of a fire explaining why I got divorced to someone who herself went on a couple of dates with my husband while separated from her own husband, to whom she has since returned. Yes indeed, that was one complex sentence -- but modern love is pretty damn complex.

Why, she asked, did we decide to split up? There were a couple of levels of discomfort for me in this conversation -- one of them being the difficulty in finding authentic words with which to answer honestly but not in a way that villainized my ex-husband -- and the other being the difficulty in hearing another woman say: "I just couldn't leave my child(ren)."

In response to the second, I said, simply: "I can understand that. It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do."

And in response to the first, well, I tried to explain that what it came down to, for me, was the fact that when we were first together, he SAW me -- in that beautiful way that enabled me to be an even better version of myself -- and then it seemed to me that he wanted to keep seeing that exact same person, and when that wasn't what he saw -- when I changed -- he, out of fear, disappointment, old wounds -- who knows? -- but for whatever reason he stopped being able to really see me in a way that felt life-affirming to me.

This song was huge for me when I split up with my husband -- and apparently I'm not alone -- Annie's introduction in this video talks about how this song resonates with people who've been through a divorce.

I love all the lyrics to this song and have, on numerous occasions, screamed them, tears streaming down my face, usually while driving in my car -- but this part of the song contains the real emotional catharsis for me:

And these are the years that we have spent

And this is what they represent

And this is how I feel

Do you know how I feel?

'Cause i don't think you know how I feel

I don't think you know what I feel

I don't think you know what I feel

You don't know what I feel