The Moment

I've been bawling my eyes out for the last few minutes. I just watched a show called "In Treatment." It's an excellent HBO production about a therapist, Paul Westin, and four of his clients, plus himself with his own therapist. Each day, from Monday to Friday for the past nine weeks, they've shown a half-hour episode of In Treatment. Each day of the week the episode is about a different client, ending on Fridays with the therapist in his own therapy session.

All through the series, which ends tomorrow, my least favourite clients have been the couple that comes to Paul on Thursdays. Jake and Amy are in couples counselling. I didn't like either of them right from the start, especially Amy, a self-absorbed, high-toned snob. Jake was the artistic type, a musician, just as self-absorbed as she was. They fought about everything. Watching them, I'm sure most viewers wondered how the hell they thought they could ever make a relationship work.

So I was very surprised tonight to find myself relating more powerfully to them, especially Amy, during a scene when Amy has "that Moment" when she suddenly realizes for certain and for real that her marriage is over. She suddenly got very quiet and looked over at Jake and said "It's over, isn't it?" And then she lost control and started sobbing. I had that moment too, quietly to myself...I never said anything to Phil about it, even though he was right there with me...and I didn't lose control. But watching Amy go through it brought it back to me like a punch in the gut. And finally, after ten years...no, eleven...I lost it too.

No matter how bad your marriage has been, no matter how unhappy you were at the end, there was always a time when things were good, when you were happy, and when the future together seemed like the best present you could ever get, and all the things you'd do together were so exciting and so delicious. There were the days and months and years when you felt like you were exactly where you wanted to be and with the person you wanted to be with, and how, no matter what troubles came along, it would always be okay because you could face them together. Does anyone ever marry without having at least a short time with those feelings?

When things start to go bad it usually happens over a long period of time. And as they progress, getting worse and worse, you adapt to it, you get used to it. But eventually you realize your situation is intolerable and you make the decision to leave or you're suddenly faced with someone telling you they're going to leave you, and then it becomes a time of decisions and plans and, yes, even excitement because you're going to have a new life and just think of all the things you have to do and the new adventures you're going to have.

But then there comes that moment. That dreadful, gut-wrenching, heart-destroying moment when you realize it's actually over. It's over and all those hopes and dreams and plans and joys you had and felt when love was part of the equation are gone, they're destroyed. The plans will never come true, the hope you had, the optimism and the simple, quiet comfort of having a soulmate...you just suddenly realize all that is gone. That moment. That horrible, horrible moment.

For me, it came unexpectedly and at a strange time. Phil came to pick me up from work. We were still living together, though we'd decided to separate as soon as one of us could find another place. As we walked to the van, we were silent and I thought "we're not talking like we used to at the end of the day."

And suddenly The Moment was there. I had just opened the van door and was about to climb up to my seat, and I remember the exact words that went through my mind... "Who will I tell my day to?"

The simple act of sharing our day with one another after work had been a ritual for the fourteen years we'd been together. Who would be there to hear about my day when Phil was not in my life anymore? Who would he tell his day to? Such a simple, seemingly inconsequential daily habit suddenly took on the real weight it owned. It was a daily act of reunion and re-dedication. The sewing up of the hole that was created each day as we parted in the morning and went our separate ways to work. Telling our day to each other was our way of replacing the lost moments, sharing the triumphs and failures of the day. It was our way of making sure we didn't miss out on the time we might have otherwise had together.

That moment at the van door had, even as it happened, a gravity that few moments in my life have ever had. Even then I realized what a significant moment it was. It saddened me more than I could ever describe. It shook me badly too. Made me waver in my conviction that separation was the right course for us.

But just the fact that I fought the tears that threatened and didn't say a word about that moment to Phil....that alone was a sign that separation was the right decision. The rift had become too great.

But the thing that moment taught me, that I think I just connected with tonight, is that no matter how unhappy you got, there was always that part of you, even in the worst moments, that never lost the love. And even through to today. There is still a part of me that loves and misses my ex husband. I still dream about him once or twice a month. I still believe he was the only person I've ever known who I could have spent my life with had we managed to work through our problems. We were compatible down to our toes in so many ways.

But I am not an easy person to live with. Nor was he. I don't think things could have ended differently under the circumstances. I do regret it still, though. The hurts and resentments are mostly forgotten and what remains is a distant, wistful "if only" kind of feeling that is probably what haunts my dreams and always will.