Imaginary Lives
A trio of short pieces by guest writer Allison Holden about marriage, divorce, and what is often left unsaid
Editor’s Note: When I read the first line of Allison Holden’s poem, it stopped me in my tracks. I re-read the opening sentences after the gut punch settled and then devoured the rest. When I continued to read her other pieces, I was shaken, in all the best ways. Because as is so often the case with my favorite type of writing, I instantly saw myself in her story.
She had the courage and insight to put into words things that so many of us long to express and can’t, either because our experiences are too fresh and raw to process coherently, or contrarily, we deeply want to write about our marriages or divorces, but we simply “aren’t allowed.”
Women long to write about our relationships, and divorced women in particular wish they could share their stories and be honest about what they have experienced, and most of us cannot—or do so with extreme caution and thinly veiled truths. We fear fallout: legal repercussions, emotional retribution, or harming our children. Our instincts to protect eclipse our desire to express, and that feels frustrating and painful.
Allison Holden’s writing is both raw and carefully constructed, and is imbued with truth and wisdom. It felt like a gift and a relief to read it, and I think readers will also be curious and surprised to read her author’s note at the end.
— Stephanie
Imaginary Lives
I marry the man who marries me
who will eventually leave me for my inexhaustible ability to be exhausting. But we aren't at that part yet.
He who would be happy sitting on the couch,
the other couch,
not the one I'm sitting on,
every night, watching the TV,
spending the hours of our conjoined lives
watching others spend the hours of their lives
making us believe in the imaginary lives they are portraying.
Make believe.
Is that what we are doing, too?
Making ourselves believe that the hilarity emanating from the big flat screen in our living room is enough to drown out the flat out lack of hilarity when the screen is
off?
Blue Moon 2023
Yesterday, as I was walking into the closing that would tip me over into an exclusive club of top producers, I saw an infant snake partially cut in half, by bicycle or otherwise, the perpetrator was unknowable. The grief came swiftly and deeply. He was suffering. He wouldn't have known why he couldn't instruct the lower half of his body to contentedly pulse himself along the sidewalk as I'm sure he'd been doing just moments before the trauma had occurred.
I was frozen in my desire to help, but how. Dare I assist him into his next life? Would that be the kindest thing to do? Or do I allow nature her cruelty and turn my attention back to my winning moment.
In the end, I chose the middle road and moved him into the grass. In hindsight, I may have inadvertently prolonged his suffering. At least had he stayed on the sidewalk, another bike may have ended his pain and confusion.
I guess I was hopeful he could heal himself. But when I came back out, his writhing had settled into acceptance and I believe he was nearer to his next life than this one.
I hope he came tumbling back as a giraffe, tall and strong, with very little chance of being split in two, shaking himself, clearing his wet new head from a very strange dream.
Tonight, the blue moon. The last one until 2037. I drove out to the closest darkness to get a better line of sight, but the best moment occurred in the middle of Poplar Avenue as she was hoisting her glowy bulk over the horizon. She stole my breath the moment I first laid eyes on her. She dominated the Northeastern sky, luminescent and celestial.
My dad called while I was out. He sounded old, older than I can allow him to be. It hollowed me out, the unwelcome reminder of his mortality. The unwelcome reminder I could be looking at the last blue moon he sees.
But before that, while the moon was still Below Horizon, approximately 6:45 pm B.H., my husband absentmindedly shut the always locked door to our screened in porch when he came outside after I'd asked him to look at some rotted wood and I called him a fucking idiot. Later, upon reflection, it reminded me of when my mom would brush my hair and I'd scream and make it as miserable an experience for her as it was for me to try to encourage her not to fucking do it anymore. I probably stole at least a few decibels of her hearing with all my caterwauling.
Pain is so easily transferrable, is it not. A most highly contagious condition. It wasn't about the door. It never is. We fought and I cried.
Later, after I reluctantly drug myself back home from moon gazing, the house was quiet and I stood alone at the sink and ate a fleshy nectarine.
And I thought of deservedness and I thought of regret. And I figured I'll need to leave the Christians to their shame and their heaven and hell. To their sins and their repentance.
There is cruelty abundant in the world and it's in me, too. The way my pain collides into another, the violence of my teeth gnashing into the tender skin of a fruit, the casual middle of the afternoon on a Tuesday suffering of an unbeloved creature.
There is goodness here, too, and it's in me, too. The soul replenishment available in a night drive with the windows down, the shared experience of simply being, the quiet absolution of a nectarine.
Poodle in a Cadillac
The daffodils are blooming, my marriage is dying, and my therapist told me to journal daily.
Maybe it isn't dying so much as an artificially animated corpse.
Animated by what, you ask? Fear and resistance, naturally.
I don't feel like I have any words inside me right now.
This morning was my first therapy session since October. Avoidance, perhaps? Pretending, maybe? Or just good old fashioned complacency. EVERYTHING IS FINE.
Sunday morning Josh & I were waiting for a table at breakfast and I laid my head on his shoulder. Jesus Christ, I'm already so tired of telling this story. I laid my head on his shoulder and he rejected my bid for connection. Why is that shocking? We've been repelling each other for YEARS. BECAUSE WE'RE NOT RIGHT FOR EACH OTHER.
Lawrence says my narrative strays from reality sometimes. About who Josh is. Who I want him to be. The Great Divide.
That's not unusual for me. It's actually quite on par with the entirety of my romantic history. I'm a classic Romantic in a Hunter archetype. I want to run you down and position you on top, under, and beside me for approximately 12 hours to 3 months before you escape and break my heart. I can and will cultivate a love story for the ages based on 12 text messages, one night together, and the smell of your cologne.
Lawrence says I'm certainly not taking this lightly (chuckle). Also, on brand for me. Depths on depths on depths. Triple water sign. Enneagram 4. I Am the Main Character.
Lawrence says, What would it take for you to accept what the truth is? How long are you going to fight against/try to change your reality?
What is the truth? I feel like I don't even know. Am I seriously going to blow up my whole life over my feelings? Over feeling dissatisfied? Is that childish and ridiculous?
It feels ridiculous. It feels like the most ridiculous thing ever to give up health insurance because my husband doesn't "spark joy". Like it's 2024, babes. It's inflation, babes. You're about to be 40, babeee. It's car insurance and litter boxes and phone bills and trash day. Dates to literally anything, a partner for literally anything. Breakfast, dinner, a body in this big house.
It's also hypervigilance and frustration and tension and rejection and loneliness. It's going to bed alone every night, never having fun together, not being on the same page, like ever. Not even wanting to have the same life, so we don't have any kind of life. It's no inside jokes, no warmth, no connection, no cuddling on the couch, no off the cuff compliments, no affection, no enthusiasm, no energy.
Lawrence says it's the bare minimum that he doesn't beat me and that he takes out the trash. Lawrence is clearly in a better marriage.
I'm in the marriage that was modeled for me. An emotionally unavailable man, a frustrated, angry woman.
Lawrence says little Allison is comfortable in the known and recognized dysfunction. God, she's good.
Today I saw a white poodle riding in the passenger seat of an older model Cadillac going the opposite way on Poplar. I don't know if, when I read these words later, the image will come to mind, but it made me happy. Like sometimes things in the Universe are exactly what they should be. There ARE puzzle pieces that fit just right and it's okay to be a poodle who must ride shotgun specifically in a Cadillac and in no other kind of vehicle. Why? Because otherwise it would be simply preposterous.
Author's Note: It may surprise you to read that I'm still married to the man who inspired these stories. Or maybe it won't. I have sincere confidence that all of the women reading this are well aware that some awakenings take mere moments while others take years; some are the work of a lifetime.
This is a portrait of an ill fitting relationship. This is a parable on how you can wear shoes that don't fit just right, but how pinched your toes will be. This is a developing story of a woman who is learning to trust herself, identify her nonnegotiables, and garner the courage to ride out beyond safe pastures. Will you join me? — Allison
Allison Holden is a heart-centered pescatarian, defier of odds, literature enthusiast, and a staunch believer in the Oxford comma. She is also an award-winning writer and Realtor. She currently resides in Memphis, TN with her dog, Lucy, three cats, Kitty, Cleo, and Monroe, her husband, and her daughter when she's home from nursing school. You can follow Allison across socials @agentallisonmem.
A Few Notes:
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This was such a powerful story, raw, real, honest. So much of it spoke to the innards of my own long marriage that I chose to end after 33 years--I didn't think I could put it back together. No, that's not completely honest. I didn't want to put it back together. Too much pain, hurt, disappointment, resentment. A way of being with each other that was set like concrete after so many decades together. I knew the work that would need to go into fixing what maybe couldn't be fixed, and I was so damned tired. (The happier ending is that we had a very amicable divorce, in the end). But you're doing it, Allison, doing the hard work of relationship, which starts with ourselves--thank you for sharing your journey with us.
Wow, Allison, I loved all of this! That first line really hit me. And this was beautiful - “I hope he came tumbling back as a giraffe, tall and strong, with very little chance of being split in two, shaking himself, clearing his wet new head from a very strange dream.”