Truth Chaser // Guest Goddess Sara Tracy
My ex husband had secrets. Big, ugly, earth-shaking secrets. The things he hid from me don’t matter anymore; we’ve been divorced longer than we were married. But once, I thought the facts would save me. I thought if I could reconstruct a narrative of our shared life, then the rubble of our marriage would start to make sense.
In the days after my marriage ended, I felt like I was looking at the world through a fun house mirror. Everything was distorted and a little terrifying. Stories I’d told a thousand times started to sound like riddles. The routes I drove to work and the grocery store became labyrinths, full of dead ends and false starts. A friend I’d known since middle school came over to help me move into my divorce apartment, and I flinched when his elbow bumped mine in the cramped space. Everything, everyone was a threat. My ability to trust had been slashed.
In those first lonely, confusing weeks and months, I became obsessed with the truth. How to find it, how to tell it, how to hold it up to the light. And I realized that my ex hadn’t been the only one lying. I had been lying to myself as much–maybe more–than he had.
I was in my early 30s when we met. The summer before, I’d had what I affectionately call my slutty phase, and I was ready to settle down. I’d caught feelings one too many times for someone who wasn’t interested in catching feelings back, and I wasn’t going to do it anymore. When you’re in that spot, it’s hard to tell the difference between settling down and settling for. I’m an introspective over-thinker, friends, but in those early days, I refused to entertain the question that kept coming up: is he enough for me? Enough what? Smart enough. Kind enough. Ambitious enough. I told myself no one is perfect. I told myself love was a choice. I told myself I’d found the one.
I started avoiding songs and movies about breakups. I stopped reading Dear Sugar because sometimes she advised people to leave their lovers. I never spoke my doubts, never gave them space and light to grow.
So, when my marriage ended, when I was freshly divorced and dating again for the first time in a few years, the story I told was that I’d been happily married until I wasn’t. That I’d have stayed with my ex until we were old and feeble if only he’d been capable of telling the truth. I wanted the men I met to know that I was on high alert. I wanted them to be honest with me, even if their honesty hurt.
Every time I met someone new, I drank a potent cocktail of excitement and dread, potential and despair. I didn’t want to start over, so I kept rushing things…hoping I could skip the getting to know you phase and jump straight into commitment. I don’t have to tell you this didn’t work out well. Again and again, I settled. The guy who hugged like he was giving me the heimlich? Dated him twice, three years apart. The guy who lied about his age and showed up an hour late to our first date got a second. When these guys turned out to be unreliable, sending mixed signals or canceling plans at the last minute, I stayed engaged. Do you even like me?! I wanted to ask. But never Do I even like you?
After the fifty-leventh bad date, after getting ghosted yet again, I started to notice the one constant: a slimy little ball deep in my gut. Sometimes it felt like butterflies, disguised itself as excitement. Sometimes it filled like a balloon, taking up all the air in my lungs and trapping my words in my throat. I named the ball Trust Issues and blamed her on my ex-husband and the other exes before him. At first, I tried to soothe her. When that didn’t work, I begged her to shut up.
But I’d been down this road before, hadn’t I? I’d silenced that voice, that inner knowing before. It’s the same one I refused to listen to when my ex-husband was still the new guy in my life. It’s the one that knew Dear Sugar would tell me to go. She wasn’t Trust Issues, she was my Truth.
There’s a reason we talk about “gut instinct,” I learned. I started paying attention to that slimy ball and as I did, she changed from something gross and uncomfortable to something warm and soft and soothing. She doesn’t need much, just a hand to my belly in moments of uncertainty. A reminder that she’s safe, and I’m safe, and we’re working together.
Blog Entry: Sara Tracy
Sara Tracey first met Anjua through the Pure Mvmnt Immersion sensual movement series. She has worked with her on and off over the years and has appeared on The Electric Feminine Podcast as a guest with Anjua.
Sara is the author of Some Kind of Shelter (Misty Publications, 2013) and Flood Year (dancing girl press, 2009). You can find her poems online at Verse Daily, Jet Fuel Review, and many other small but snazzy publications. She has an MFA in poetry, a PhD in English, and a totally unrelated day job.
Sara lives with a nervous pitbull and two cats (you can meet them at @glowsara on Instagram).
She believes there is no problem a few hip circles can’t solve.