She drives home, listening to a podcast about a divorced woman whose husband cheated on her. Their stories are different and yet the same; She knows what it feels like to be the betrayer and the betrayed. She tries to put herself into their shoes and listening to this story helps. It helps to know that these stories are stories repeated over and over, all over the world, even in Toronto. Yes, Canadians get divorces, too. She feels the hum of the sweet spot of perfect recognition in someone else’s words.
She is cramping and bleeding already from the IUD that the gynecologist inserted just an hour before. Here she is, driving home from the doctor, wondering how she went from being settled and stable and comfortable and then suddenly being thrust into inhabiting the body of a 46-year-old woman pondering sex with boys plucked from the ether of the internet like shopping for shoes on Amazon. She ponders the fact that men in their 30s and 40s don’t show much interest at all. Maybe she is just a hole, a receptacle. Maybe that is all she deserves.
She knows, deep down, that isn’t true at all.
She knows that sex in and of itself is not a bad thing. She doesn’t know if she is emotionally ready for sex with anyone; she knows she aches for human touch and some sign that she can connect with someone again. She knows that a life without touch and intimacy is no life at all. Maybe she can learn to trust someone again.
Maybe some day she will trust her self again.
She turns down a road one street over from her old house, because she doesn’t like to drive by it. She knows he probably doesn’t want her to drive by either. She crosses over her old street, lost in thought, pondering the strange life she is living now, the one that doesn’t even feel real yet. A car passes, the driver raising a hand to say hello. She looks in the rear view window, and sees their old car driving farther and farther away. It is her ex-husband waving, as they both move away from each other, in separate directions, each going to their own homes, and their new lives.
She laughs and laughs at the absurdity of it all, this life, it’s pain and strangeness, and sadness and beauty, and the wonder of possibility tinged with the loss of something that can never be retrieved.