Chapter 44: Defibrillation

The morning after the night I burned Viktor’s name on a piece of paper was a Monday. I woke up alone in my apartment feeling as if I had never gone to sleep, burdened with life. I forced myself out of bed and got ready for work. I didn’t bother with any beauty regimen beyond brushing my teeth and hair and throwing on some mascara. There was no one to impress at work; I’d already exhausted all of my tenable prospects. I smoked a cigarette before I departed. I could pretty much tell the type of day it would be by what time I started smoking.

I felt like a fraud. I had practiced yoga for more than 20 years and taught for ten. I had created a vegan blog and considered myself a health-minded and spiritual person. I’d spent two years in an immersive study of energy and intuition and how to manifest my dreams. I had led yoga retreats and worked with clients and advised them on their most personal issues. But I wasn’t applying any of what I knew. I was a smoker and a drinker and a slut. I was on a path of self-destruction with no plan of how to stop it, and there was no one to ask for help. Or, I didn’t know who to ask. I didn’t know how. I had several close friends I could have called on, who would have talked things through with me and helped me come up with a plan to get my life back on track, to start fresh, living and embodying the wisdom inside me. But I didn’t want them to know the mess I’d made. I didn’t want anyone to know how fucked up I was, because I still hadn’t realized that fucked up, at least a little bit, is actually pretty normal.

I put out my cigarette and drove to the water taxi that would ferry me to downtown Seattle. I trudged five blocks up the long, steep hill to my office on the 23^rd floor of a new building that stood in a row of others just like it. By the time I walked through the revolving door of the lobby I was sweaty and demoralized. Nonetheless, I smiled at everyone in the elevator and greeted the people I knew by name. I hoped they couldn’t smell the smoke on my breath and secretly hoped they could. Maybe it would let them know in a way I couldn’t say: I need help.

It might have been a red flag to me when I interviewed for a Customer Success role but was hired as a Marketing Manager. It might have been a clue to me that my role had no job description, that the woman who hired me had never even seen my resume. I was so excited to land it, though, that I wasn’t thinking about the big picture. I was just grateful for a salary that would allow me to live in Seattle and support my son on my own, and excited to work among a lot of really smart people. They hired me. They thought I belonged in their ranks.

But something had felt off to me from my first day. One of these things was not like the others, and it was me. I tried to convey my uneasiness to my boss in an early one-on-one.

“I’m having a bit of a hard time,” I ventured. “I don’t think I see things the same way people here seem to. I am much more interested in people and relationships, for example…than the bottom line. I feel like a black sheep.”

She seemed to agree with me: “Different is what makes us diverse.”

It was apparently meant to be encouraging, as if she valued my perspective, but her comment sounded void of meaning, rehearsed. Robotic, even. A wave of uneasiness washed over me and I gave a tiny nod. This was the job, I guessed. Do the work, play the game. Submit.

Things didn’t improve; they got worse. After several months I was ready to quit, but I knew I would need Jack’s sign off. He was not likely to take kindly to me giving up an income that nearly matched his, especially if it meant he’d have to help me bridge the gap.

I brought up the possibility of quitting during one of our weekly family dinners. We were at a wood-fired pizza restaurant. Asher was distracted with a phone.

“I know you know how miserable I am at work,” I began. “I’m starting to feel really paranoid. I feel like they’re gaslighting me.”

I quickly summarized some recent work drama.

“So what are you saying?”

“Well, I want to leave, but then I wouldn’t have an income. So I was thinking if I moved back in downstairs, I could save a lot of money, and I could see Ash more often.”

Our split was painful, but the hardest part was missing Asher. I’d been living on my own for several months and still felt like there was a hole in me when he was away.

“So you’re saying you want to quit your job and move in downstairs?”

Jack sounded incredulous. He clearly hadn’t forgotten the low simmering tension when we were living together.

“Well, I can’t see how I’m going to stay in my job. And if I don’t have a job, I can’t pay my rent. Honestly, if I don’t quit, I think I’m either going to have a nervous breakdown or they’re going to fire me.”

“How are you going to make money?” he asked, draining his wine glass.

“Well, I don’t know. But if I reduce my expenses I won’t need as much. I really want to go back to working on Eat Like a Yogi. And then you’d have home cooked food all the time!”

I couldn’t see through my feeble sales tactics that I was stuck in the first stage of grief. I still hadn’t come to terms with the most basic fact: our marriage was over. Though our divorce hadn’t been finalized—we still hadn’t even filed—my problems at work weren’t Jack’s problems to solve. As much as I hated it, I needed that job.

I tried to think of ways I could be better. Maybe if I stopped drinking, I thought. Or maybe just on weekends. And no more dating. I’ll work at night instead. I’ll do extra. I’ll do anything.

And I tried. I stayed home at night. I read books. I took walks. I spent time with Jack and Asher. But my nights home alone were unproductive. I felt consumed with grief. I imagined my guys—I still thought of them as “my guys”—having dinner together at our table—I still thought of it as “our” table—or watching a show or reading bedtime stories and ached like I had the flu. I walked around my apartment hanging and re-hanging pictures, moving objects and shifting furniture, aimlessly shuffling and nesting, trying to make it a home. I’d have to remind myself to eat dinner, often cereal, or toast. Something easy, fast, and light, that wouldn’t ground me to a place I didn’t want to be or remind me I had no one else to cook for.

For my whole life I had looked forward to being a mom more than anything. My first son died. And now my separation from Jack meant I was going to miss out on half of my living son’s life because he was with his dad. I was gutted. Half of his life. My only son.

After a few weeks I drifted back to swiping. But instead of an aimless, anyone-will-do strategy, I determined I was going to meet a boyfriend who was stable and kind.

One boyfriend. One man.

My boyfriend. Not someone else’s husband.

Ideologically, nonmonogamy still spoke to me. I believed in the notion of it. But I had yet to see any examples of a consensually nonmonogamous relationship that I admired. Jessa and Bobby fought all the time. Viktor and Marin were a rollercoaster, and their friends who were nonmonogamous also seemed to entertain an incredible amount of variability. So when I matched with a guy that said he was monogamous, a gentle giant that could talk about spirituality without resorting to platitudes, we made a date—a dog walk at the park near my house.