"She's a two-time loser," is the phrase he used to describe a twice-divorced member of his extended family. I was having a beer with a friend from high school, someone I hadn't seen in the intervening 1,000 years since graduation. That phrase hung in the air for a couple of seconds, as I deliberated over whether I should take it personally or not. I wondered if he -- happily married for many years -- automatically thought of *every* divorced person as a loser, me in particular.
We were having a nice easy time reconnecting, sharing both the good and bad bullet points of our adult lives. He knew I was divorced, and I had even shared with him some of the "why" details of the breakdown of my marriage. He certainly didn't treat me as if he thinks of me as a loser, hopelessly tainted by the stink of marital failure. I think "two-time loser" is something he just routinely says when asked about the marital status of this particular person, whose two divorces frankly seem like the least of her troubles.
But that phrase stuck in my craw (wherever the hell that is), and I have now regurgitated it up for your consumption. That phrase seems like it's a kind of shorthand I've heard used by other people -- notably all married. Instead of detailing *all* the f*ckups in someone's life to prove that this "loser" is fairly exiled in Loserville, one can long-story-short-it by just bringing up the fact that he/she is divorced. And the higher the divorce count, the easier it is to write someone off.
Even though I can see how my behavior contributed to my shitty marriage and that I stayed far, far too long in it, I don't think of myself as a loser. Unlucky? Perhaps. Emotionally unenlightened? Certainly. But a loser? Emphatically no. While my ex may not have valued any of my good qualities, I do. And I know others who do too.
Every divorce has its own story. Some are as simple and trite as The Bridges of Madison County, others as tragic as Sophie's Choice. Then there are the ones like mine, blacker than Catch-22.
First, these posts give me the horrors worrying that I was the guy who said the bad thing. Second, I have found love/romance to be one of the more challenging aspects of my humanity. It sounds so simple. I make it very complicated and often wreck it. My students and I just read a book by Jerry Spinelli called Loser. It frames the word in its childhood underpinnings where we begin to rank ourselves as better or worse than others, resulting in inflated egos and crippling self-loathing. I love your assertive stance, blatant rejection, that you are not a loser. I hate that word.
ReplyDeleteAlso: a craw is the crop/throat of a bird. BUT, you cannot simultaneously have something stuck in it AND chew on it, since it had to pass the mouth in order to get there. Kind of like not being able to lick your own elbow. But not really.
If you just tried to lick your own elbow, you're still not a loser.
D'oh! I just fixed it, so I hope it's biologically possible this time. My knowledge of birds begins and ends with the Portlandia phrase, "Put a bird on it."
DeleteMaybe you're unconsciously sabotaging all your romantic relationships because you're holding out for Ryan Reynolds or me!