#85 HOW I SPENT MY TWENTY-NINTH BIRTHDAY ALONE
Okay, I’m being dramatic: separated and divorcing not fully alone
I’m Elaine (or Lainey), a British-American editor by day and writer by night (night sounds better but it’s more like ‘around my day job,’ which is mostly mornings, lunches, weekends). I’m a child-free, elder millennial cat lady (I suppose the epitome of recent memes but I inherited my cat from my late Father). Thankfully, although I am writing about my past dating disasters, I finally found my person – hence why I’m writing the journey of Why We Met – or how I found the person who is the right sort of person and fit for me, after far too many of the wrong sorts of people.
For now, I’m writing about my ex/first husband, AKA the fourth person I met at Starbucks, Benoit, a Lebanese-American former engineer turned US Army officer turned back again into an engineering project manager for a company in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where we’d moved from Germany after meeting in Columbus, Georgia. Long story short, whilst I visited my family in Florida, he ended our marriage via text. See Chapter 82 for a bit longer recap and that story here and if you want to read the whole thing, start here at Chapter 72. The year is 2016.
Packing my worldly possessions
I’m not sure if you’ve ever packed your bags to leave a relationship or not but it’s not a great feeling.
I remember packing things into my car from ending things with high school sweetheart (HSS) and with Dorian (AKA the Stella Adler Academy actor), but I’d wanted to end things with HSS and Dorian made me miserable. It wasn’t quite like with ending a marriage.
Each successive relationship and heartbreak seemed to feel just that little bit worse but in a marriage, you pin your hopes and dreams on a future that will now never materialise.
I had Benoit do most of the packing for me as he was better with logistics and I couldn’t face it.
He wasn’t thrilled at this but I just said that he did this to me (probably in an overly whiny tone) and he was better at packing and I didn’t want broken things at the other end, which would feel especially shitty as I was very attached to my things back then.
At first, he’d been all dramatic and emotional (probably not real emotion) and “you can have everything for all I care” sort of sentiment, but when it came down to it and we had to have a cold walk around our house “inventorying” things as if we had on hard hats and a clipboard, he decided he’d quite like lots of things.
So the tearful, “You can have whatever you want” wasn’t quite the truth. Inventorying your own things, the things that are only things but that you’d collected over the years to make up the detritus of what you thought was a life, is quite indescribable, painful even (only to be trumped by sorting my Dad’s things after he died – but at least then I had the support of my sister, husband Michael, brother-in-law, and my sister’s mother). In this, I was alone.
Benoit kept all my paintings and all the furniture anyway, the set of wine glasses that he’d so conveniently purchased in preparation for our split (the split he claimed was spontaneous). He wanted a couple of German smokers that I’d loved, one that was unique from a trip to Regensburg and one that was a little bagpipe-playing Scotsman. He wanted one of my teacups, a finely cracked Royal Albert Old Country Roses one, so he could remember me when he saw it (boy did he know how to play me).
I’ve always been an essentially an optimistic person and I didn’t know what life had in store for me. I had the vague sense that any future life would be worse. I’d be poor. I’d have to start over. I’d lost years where I could have had a career, done something more. I should have secretly saved and stashed money away. I should have kept hold of my own money at least, had my own bank account. But I didn’t do any of that. All I could do was keep moving forward.
Please, any young people (or people in general), if you’re entering into marriage protect your future self. Maybe that’s a jaded way of looking at things, but at the very least be financially independent. Thanks to my marriage to Benoit, I’d never have a joint bank account again. But also thankfully, I don’t think Michael has ever been interested in having anything like that. We pay for things together but keep our finances as our own and that works just fine for us.
My stuff was in boxes and loaded up in the garage. I’d had a big clearout and thrown so many of my things away, which was equally painful for someone who was, as I said, quite attached to things. Almost a decade on, my relationship to things and materialism in general is much changed but I think it takes healing to come to that place, especially if you move around often and feel that things remind you of places. And maybe they do but no one is ever happy with too many things (but more on that later) even if you think you are.
I had approximately four big suitcases again to live out of for however long. It was like my year was going in big rat-wheel circles. It felt like being in limbo between England, Germany, and Minnesota all over again.
It felt like the end of everything.
A snippet I found
I wrote this in an email to Benoit trying to save our marriage, five days after he left me, so I guess I have proof in my own words that I wasn’t totally delusional in the beginning of the relationship and he did make me think I was choosing this amazing man. Shame it didn’t last.
The man I married would drive back from work to bring me breakfast in bed, he realized the small things mattered, it wasn’t about lavish gifts, but time. The times we’d go to IHOP together in the morning, spending all day cuddling and having sex, talking with each other through the night, going on walks together, spending time together. That [Benny] didn’t spend his attention away from his wife scrolling on Facebook either. That [Benny] realized that those little things make relationships. That [Benny] was gone a lot too, but he made sure he kept our relationship happy. It isn’t about HOW much time, but the quality of time. You’d be hard pressed to find someone in the future who demands nothing from you, especially if you have children. Your wife and children will demand time from you. Just making money isn’t enough. I can make money for myself, but I cannot be my own companion. I want that companion I used to have, and I want that companion to learn to communicate with me.
But what came after was his anger and shouting at all the ways I failed to do everything he wanted and all the ways I failed. You can read the email in the bonus material here.
BONUS MATERIAL: 42 DAYS LATER: IS THIS THE ACCEPTANCE OR THE ANGER PART OF GRIEF?
That time I worked retail
Before I left Minnesota, I briefly got a job at Home Depot in Minnesota because, you know, I had to be contributing.
I’d never worked retail before and it’s surprisingly quite complex, difficult, and stressful. Home Depot is like B&Q and I don’t know what the equivalent is around the world but it’s basically a store that sells bits of wood and tools and building things and sinks and nuts and bolts and even ceiling fans.
I feel for people who work in retail or restaurants. Plus, people aren’t always the nicest, which is something I’d known from my days working in customer service at call centres.
That’s when they are the most not nice, when you’re a disembodied voice over the phone. Thus, I’m always very nice and patient with call centre people now because I know they are just trying to do their job and really they just want for the day to be over and for the calls not to be all that difficult.
Whilst I’d had my fair share of dull call-centre jobs – one of which sold Pay-Per-View porn, and sometimes people wanted to order that with a twenty-something on the phone – I’d mostly worked things like tutoring on campus and as an intern at a hospital (where I’d met
).And later my research assistant jobs for professors I adored and university teaching jobs (in grad school and after).
It was hard to get excited about unfulfilling careers, so the accusation that Benoit had levelled at me (via his ex) was a little unfair. I had, after all, moved halfway across the world to follow him so what did he expect? That I’d be girlbossing my career and being a wife. He wasn’t exactly setting me up to succeed.
My Home Depot colleagues were all Minnesota nice, so sweet. The orange apron left a lot to be desired as did standing all day on concrete floors. That is murder on your body. Imagine if I’d been as old as I am now. They don’t get nice chairs like English checkout people do.
The worst bit was when I had to work in the garden centre. The nice bit was being surrounded by plants in a sort of greenhouse unlike the fluorescent hardware store bit inside. Anyway, I wasn’t best placed to work this position because it involved a lot of lifting and checking under things so as to see if people were stealing but I probably couldn’t be arsed if they were trying to hide a packet of seeds under the twelfth plant pot. I was not made to work in retail.
Benoit also got angry when a colleague had texted me asking to hang out one night. He was quite handsome with an ex who looked like a supermodel and the cutest daughter and he was giving very lovely dad vibes, not that I was in the mood for anything of the sort. I said no, but it didn’t matter.
Even split up, Benoit clearly wanted to control me.
Visiting Colorado at the end of May
I managed to have a lovely jaunt visiting my Colorado family. I can’t recall how long I went for but I adored seeing my Aunt Brooke, Uncle Tim, and all five of their beautiful, intelligent daughters (yours, mine, and ours children).
Seriously, I love these girls and they’ve all very much grown up to do very cool things. One is a serious video editor who wins awards and edits for shows on Disney and Amazon (like Daisy Jones and the Six) and lives in LA with her wife who does some equally glam PR job and they go to fab parties and have a very lovely looking life with their cute cat. Two of the girls are still at home and haven’t quite fully grown up, though. And my Aunt is one of those “cool Moms” like in Mean Girls but actually cool and everyone wants to be like her.
I wrote on my Facebook of the trip:
1 June 2016: I'm going to miss my Colorado family. What a fun and crazy time with five noisy, beautiful, and smart girls, a silly dog, and a cute cat, plus my aunt and uncle!
Growing up as a sort of only child with my two half-sisters where we all grew up at different times as sort of only children, I was definitely not used to the chaos and noise of a house full of seven people and would have to slink off to the den for some quiet but I loved the warm hugs and the sympathy about how shit my situation was; having the support of my family did give me hope.
My 29th birthday in Florida
Okay, so unlike the title I wasn’t actually alone on my birthday. It just feels like it when the world is set up for coupledom.
My twin best friends from high school (Sarah and Anna), Hannah (my baby sister), and my Mother all actually made my birthday special. (I’m a Gemini by the way. Some people hate Geminis!)
My Mum got me a cake from Publix and I had a cake with those number candles that read ‘92.’ They sang Happy Birthday and I tried to be as cheery as I could. I did feel loved by them at least, but delicate and heartbroken.
I received a birthday text from Benoit.
Benoit: Good morning. Happy birthday. I wish I was saying it in different circumstances or situation.
Elaine: Thank you. I appreciate it. I wish so too but it’s a confusing statement because you set these “circumstances” in motion.
Sarah and Anna took me partying in our old university spots in Valdosta, Georgia. I’ll always be ever so grateful for the loving-kindness of lifelong friends. We may not have kept in touch regularly and only sent the odd message, but on that night and in that summer in June, they were there for me.
I felt a million years old amongst all the university crowd, which had mostly thinned out as people go home for the summer or travel usually.
I was drunk flirted with by a random very drunk yet handsome man who told me he’d move to England and to wait for him. I was also hammered but got his Facebook details. Sadly, years ago, I think he was killed in a car accident, but he made me smile that night.
I was absolutely smashed and Anna’s boyfriend had made bacon roses, which are a thing, and I remember us giggling in her kitchen eating bacon before sleeping in her guest room. I was heartbroken but a little hopeful. (Sorry for the vegans and bacon haters out there.)
I regret now that I didn’t spend more unadulterated time with my mother when I had the chance. I wish I’d slowed down and enjoyed the moments more but I felt a sense of urgency to begin my life. I wanted things to start, the wheels to get in motion, to where or to what I didn’t know but I thought the first step was getting to England.
I didn’t know then that only one month later I’d meet Michael and that my 30th birthday would be an entirely different story.
Coming up next, the security camera surprise and my massive divorce settlement (okay kidding) – the story of how I was probably very stupid and didn’t even get a lawyer.
New here or haven’t followed from the beginning, catch up on the other eighty-four chapters (1984, what?), including why I’m writing these chapters – with the odd “present day snippet” of what is happening in my world lately and the bonus material for paid subs.
Have you ever felt alone like this after a breakup? I know during emotional turmoil it can feel like you’re alone in a crowded room and connection and love are so important to the human experience. I’d love to hear your thoughts and thanks for reading. Love and best wishes, always.
P.S. Fellow Substacker,
, has a wonderful murder mystery out (called The Man in the Wall) and it only took me two days to read. It’s funny and charming and if you work a corporate job you’ll find that you can relate a little too much! You can buy her book on Kindle for less than the price of a couple of Freddos these days.
Need to catch up on the Benoit saga? Check out the past chapters:
My stomach flipped for you reading about that inventory and packing up. I’m sorry it had to happen
Aww the PS was a lovely surprise! I didn’t expect that, thank you!! 🙏