A friend pointed out
a rather nice story in the paper the other day. Her aunt and uncle designed and built a unique duplex after their divorce, one that allows the kids to keep their bedrooms while the dimensions of the house shift around them.
Pretty cool. The sort of thing I liked to think, long ago, was possible. The sort of thing I still like to think would be possible one day.
But that's not the point of this post.
The point of this post is in the seventh graf: "Why the marriage failed is really none of our business. But Monica explains..."
Ugh.
Yeah, definitely not a stranger's business. (If you know about this blog, you're not a stranger.) But I thought it was funny that the reporter first noted that it wasn't our business, and then went on to give a reason.
It's been about a year since my traumatic summer "vacation". I know I'm doing better, because part of me longs to see my family again. But part of me is in knots over what is to come. I don't want to answer questions about why. Not because the lie I will tell is particularly awful, but because I don't think it's strangers' business. It's not even family's business.
At some point, people decide that you have to explain why you're not with someone. I don't know if the magic time period is in years or months or, God help us, in days. I only really know that after twenty years, people think I owe them an explanation.
I feel like this is pretty intrusive; not only because I'll have to lie again and then maintain the new lie, but because it doesn't seem like it should matter enough to even ask. We're not together. If you're a stranger, you don't need to know any more. Even if you're not a stranger, you probably don't need to know any more.
Okay, not YOU. But I'm definitely planning to lie to everyone else.
I need to find a way to answer the question. I gather that "I dunno; how come YOU aren't married to him?" isn't acceptable.
