My father sent me postcards from all over the world. One of them was a postcard of Waikiki palms, saturated by the night orange glaze of lights. What seemed impossible as a youth was accomplished. I learned a new language. I received two degrees in California, one of them from Berkeley where my beloved Czeslaw Milosz once taught. Five years ago I came to Waikiki (on the way to my sublet on the windward side) and I lay splattered in a Jagermeister sugary daze on the street of this amusement park, chasing away the ghosts of my first marriage (a picturesque Hanalei Bay ceremony ten years prior, to an islander that has never been to the Phillipines but loved his mother’s lumpia)--while already dreading the end of the second marriage only 6 months old. I had some waiting and learning and living to do. This past year has been the hardest. After three years of friendship, my divorce was finalized the following January and although I previously thought it would make no difference, the legality of the end hit hard. It is the year of truth for me.
When I came to Hawaii five years ago, nothing was like I expected. I did not expect the huge military jets circling the picturesque Kaneohe Bay on which my temporary house was. I did not expect the military presence to be so profound, for the first time in my life. I did not expect that coming to Hawaii would be the end of my marriage and not the new beginning I was hoping for. I wanted to leave behind the doctoral program, leave behind the miscarriage, the sperm bank donation drive, the removal of his cancerous testicle, the waiting room of trembling. We got married beautifully but hurriedly and only two weeks after the wedding a ring was thrown onto the porch branches. Retrieved but the break already there. Shortly after the wedding, his MFA show provided a brief moment of light and creativity. Then we spent four months laying in bed, watching Mad Men and the Office, drinking wine, whiskey, sparkling water sometimes. We ate a lot of pizza. Mostly delivery, mostly laying down, our stomachs expanding. He, tall and skinny, grew in gut only. My entire body expanded in lethargy. We decided to leave the Bay Area. Bloated we arrived in Hawaii.
For me the story of my divorce is a story of dismemberment and resurrection. I came to Hawaii five years ago emboldened by the fact that I wasn’t alone. It was supposed to be safe. But it all fell apart under the rainbows and blue skies. We could not go further, my mercurial husband and I, and I needed to learn how I was going to survive, on my own. It wasn’t before I made a lot of risky emotional choices that the knowledge would settle in. It took five years for the repairman to show up. Through the torrential antics of pride and expression, this is the beginning. I can go on now. In the previous incarnations of sex, I would want to repeat the experience. After each romantic liaison, no matter how wrong--I would long, because I did not want it to end. Not like my marriage. I wanted something to last. And finally, I realized that nothing good can last if I don’t accept and forgive that my marriage did not. That the old cliche that you have to love yourself first has to be finally inhabited, not just intellectually understood but crossed over, so you finally end up on the other shore.