Stonecrop Magazine

Jessie is a friend. She is a bad friend, but I cut her slack because she’s new to it. Jessie used to be my wife. She was a good wife. Bad friend, good wife. That’s why she gets the slack. Here are things Jessie used to do, but does not anymore: whisper words of encouragement to our suffering houseplants, sing the items on our shopping list to the tune of You Are My Sunshine, love me unconditionally. All of these omissions are forgivable. I’ve told her this. To err is human, etc. etc..

Here is how I am handling things: I wake up alone, I perform smiling exercises in my bathroom mirror, I draw elaborate charts and maps on the walls of my home. Order, structure, routine. This is what keeps me going. For instance, take this graph. Notice the great sweeping curves? This represents my separation anxiety. Sure, the mood changes are significant, but the thing to really take away here is they are also gradual and expected. If you think about it, my divorce is just depression as predictable variance. It’s encouraging really, if you find the right light.

I have Sharpied a map I’m charting of our home on this wall over here. I admit, it’s an ambitious project, but it’s been good for me. I’m practicing self-improvement. Here’s my process: every morning, I count my steps from one room to the next and make preliminary sketches; in the afternoon, I dwell on the night I let my life fall apart; I spend my evenings double checking my work for accuracy.

If I account for stride-length variance, here is what I know for certain: there are fourteen steps from the bonus room to the downstairs half-bath, but only five from the dining room to the kitchen island. Closed spaces can be deceiving. For example, though it appears to be an impossibly great distance, it actually only took Jessie four steps to move from our bedroom to the coat closet, and just three more to vanish through the front door. She hasn’t yet been back, because she is a bad friend. But I am practicing leniency. We all make mistakes.