My wife got home last night. Now, that’s not breaking news for most couples but she was returning back to Australia - 10,285 miles from our recent elopement in Las Vegas. From my SUV to Baltimore, I followed her rigid shuddering plane dot across the sea until it docked at the airport, turning on itself like a dog who had found its tail for the first time.
When her ‘just landed!’ message pinged through to my phone, in one tab, I was researching how to find my ex’s address without actually having to speak to her so I could deliver some divorce documentation, In the other, I was slowly downloading the wedding photos that our photographer had just sent through from the Little White Wedding Chapel.
A year ago in two weeks, September 16th, I was about to find out that my ex was cheating. So began the slow warp of deep change that would ring through the to the new year. The knife of betrayal is hot and merciless and sounds like all the bells of heaven and hell ringing at once. I have a whole back catalogue of grief poetry in the Notes App on my phone that I might never be able to look in the eyes. But, as I googled if it was technically possible to have my boss serve my ex divorce papers, I realised how jawlessly grateful I am to her for being so stupid. Part of me wants to thank her but that part is enlightened in a way that the rest of me laughs at. But it meant I didn’t miss Aurelia. I realised how close I was to never knowing her. And that would be the real tragedy of my divorce.
If America has taught me anything, it’s that new beginnings aren’t possible - in 2022, they’re a requirement. Inherently, the action of starting again means an ending has been allowed for. Allowing, accommodating, providing for change requires incredible maturity, generosity of self and cultural awareness. I’m reminded of grandmothers, my own and many like her, who grew up during The Great Depression and so kept everything from sugar packets at cafes to broken jewellery. They were addressed with the language of scarcity – keep everything, waste nothing, everything could be gone in an instant. Mend everything from your clothes to your husbands and never, ever throw anything or anyone away.
When we’d visit as kids, their houses felt more like museums to that moment in history. Little phonebooks filled with the landlines of friends they’d always keep, no matter how boring or selfish or prudish, littered the many stools and coffee tables. Toothpastes strangled to the final inch, then cut open with scissors and scraped out. America today is almost the opposite. The country relaxes over its own waistband. The water is bad, so it’s all bottled. Fashion is fast. Masks are disposable, so too relationships. But there’s a midpoint of real change that lives in the space between scarcity and excess, hoarding and littering, that is incredibly important. It’s where I found love. It’s also where I started eating meat.
After 12 years of vegetarianism, I had my first hotdog on the night of my wedding at a place called Coney Island Las Vegas. It was white plastic tables, red straws and servers in navy hats that matched our ivory wedding outfits. We smoked a joint that was called Watermelon Wonder outside the restaurant and I ordered two Coney Dogs with chilli. Full disclosure, I absolutely thought that meant it would come out a bit spicy but was amused to find that I would be eating meat on top of meat for my first meal back. I’ve never soft launched anything, why start now?
The first dripping bite of that hot dog made me grin like a teenager. Suddenly, I was reminded of the iron pills in my suitcase and wondered if I’d need them anymore? Would my veins miraculously become easier for blood test pathologists to find? Would I, at 31, turn into a night owl with a 2am painting practice? As it happens, I had to switch back to plant life for a couple of days while the surprise meat made its way through my system. My iron stores felt unchanged. But what I also felt was a genuine, apolitical and entirely gorgeous sense of freedom. Yes, being a vegetarian was a predominantly moral choice but also came heavily tangled in my eating disorder of many years. I have since had In N Out burger (twice), bacon bits (three times) and a corner of a meatball (wasn’t quite ready for a literal ball of meat, as it happens).
Something strange has happened since I started eating meat - a whole portion of my memory has returned. I’m tasting landscapes, restaurants, holidays that I haven’t remembered for 12 years. Chicken is a hotel buffet in Sydney. Salami is the Caulfield Grammar School canteen. Sausage is the questionable van at the Footscray train station with the good donuts and the tiny sauce packets and my winter uniform. Meat is making me fuller. Not only physically, who and where I’ve been is being re-fleshed. There’s more meat on my bones. More of my history, senses, enjoyment. More meat pies and with them, the times I went to the football with my dad. More spaghetti bolognese that my babysitter used to make badly but with love so we ate it smiling and drowned in parmesan cheese. More.
Normalise more. Normalise changing direction, and often. Normalise not explaining it, or over-explaining to strangers via a semi-weekly newsletter. Normalise letting it change nothing about you or everything. The privilege to pivot has been hard won by divorcees and grandmothers of the Great Depression the world over. So, let’s use it. Change the toxic relationship, whether it’s with your partner, the concept of divorce or marriage or vegetarianism. Change your hair or your mind or your life. Get changed. If you’re used to dressing modestly for work or because that’s what people have come to expect of you, wear something bold. Change to invite your environment adapt to you, rather than the other way around. Eat meat. Eat pussy. Eat cake. Try it.
Because if cake, divorce and America have one lesson common, it’s that there’s always room for seconds.
-TN
This made me smile Tamara xx
Fucking perfect, as always. Praising my seconds.