A Divorce Essay

This is a divorce essay.

Over the summer Avery and I took a trip together, just the two of us, to Barcelona. It was a mixed bag. He refused to go to the beach, la Sagrada Família, or even the Big Fun museum. He protested all the way around Park Güell, apparently immune to the charms of the quaint manic pixie dream houses; instead he insisted we sit down and read The Enchanted Wood. Mostly though, he just wanted to splash around in the pool, inadvertently terrorising The Gays in the process. The Gays just wanted to work on their tans and sip cocktails in peace. I get it. We couldn’t outstay our welcome at the pool.

The one thing we could both agree on was a post-dinner gelato (or churro) as we meandered back to the hotel. It became our nightly ritual.

Avery and I have had adventures all over London – up until May this year when he turned 5 and had to be in school full-time we spent every Friday together on what we called ‘Mama Days’. We’d go to museums and parks and take wee jaunts all over the capital. But this was the first time we’d been abroad, just the two of us, without his dad.

I’ve been trying to hold onto the reactions we had from people on that trip – and by people I mean men – that signalled their discomfort, in one way or another, with this set-up. A mother. Travelling alone. To a foreign country. With a small child. It hadn’t occurred to me before that this was an aberration. 

It first hit me when, caught in a biblical downpour, two young guys from Amsterdam invited us to stand under a tree with them while we all waited for a table in a nearby cafe. They spoke at least three different languages. They were sweet with A and quizzed him about capital cities and other countries he’s visited. They asked him about football and were disappointed to learn that he cares about that even less than he cares for Gaudi. And then they turned to me and asked ‘so, is it just the two of you?’. We were illegible to them. They needed an explanation. Instead I said ‘yeah, just us’ and smiled. Because how do you tell a couple of strangers that you just left your husband?

The second encounter was less subtle. While we were getting into the cab back to the airport, I handed the driver my case to load into the back. He looked at me, head cocked to the side, and asked ‘marit?’. I shook my head, which he must have taken to mean I didn’t understand, because then he started yelling ‘MAN’, loudly. Still no, just the two of us. 

The third, was coming back into the UK, when I had not long finished explaining the concept of hostile borders to A. I handed the border patrol agent our passports, and he asked us where we’d been. ‘Barcelona’, we said. He then asked if I travelled with Avery’s birth certificate and I said ‘lol no, of course not’. ‘Well you should’, he warned, and added, threateningly, ‘and you’re about to find out why’. He turned to A, who was at this point clinging onto my leg and hiding his face. The agent gestured at me and asked ‘who is this person?’. A said ‘my mum’ and the agent told me that he had to ask because we have different surnames. I wanted to yell at him about all the regressive layers of logic contained in the idea that having the same surname as someone was a guarantee of safety. But instead I just said ‘well, we have the same face’. He didn’t laugh but he let me and my doppelgänger go. 

These experiences in Barcelona made me think of the essay Against the Couple Form by Clémence X. Clementine and associates from the Infinite Venom Girl Gang. 

‘The couple grants a woman personhood and social visibility. She obtains a title, a temporality, a space through the couple. Marriage enshrines this logic and its perpetuation of the specific form assumed by patriarchy under capitalism.’ 

If being part of a couple – particularly one that is recognised and governed by the state – grants you social legitimacy, what happens when you blow up your marriage? How do people make sense of you? How do you make sense of yourself? Even after many waves of feminism, women are really only afforded two possibilities: sad-spinster-cat-lady or girlboss your way through marriage, motherhood, and career.