Feminismz #1: The D-Word

Or why the personal is political forever and ever and ever, amen.

Here I am, just writing my way into acceptance of some of the worst financial decision I’ve ever made in my life which were as follows: 1) quit job 2) move to California 3) have a kid 4) write exclusively with no plan on how this would work, which is not to say I regret them in any way. But they have brought me, to some extent, to this place, which is, and it’s not an announcement, considering divorce.

In doing so, I’ve been reading a lot - most notably THIS ESSAY by Lyz Lenz called: It Took Divorce to Make My Marriage Equal: I spent 12 years fighting for an equal partnership, when what I needed was a divorce - about what happens for women thereafter, to see if I can project, which, as everyone knows, is a terrible idea. The other terrible part of this plan is that writers are writing from a point of reflection, further down the road, and tend to skip the part RIGHT after the divorce, which - after prying into people’s lives in conversation rather than reading, I have learned is the bleakest darkest six-nine months period in their lives. Things like: continued legal things with your ex, financial worries to the extent you never imagined and a decreased ability to care for your kid in the way they are used to being cared all confirm to me the reason why so many people don’t do this thing that we’ve all considered doing, some of us for a very long time. Why, again tell me? Because, I realized, it feels like we’d be doing it to ourselves, rather than for ourselves. A classic case of cultural gaslighting if I do say so myself.

The other thing I should say about this potential divorce is that - I’m not really married, which changes things - oh does it change things! On the one hand, we can just separate without any legal paperwork of any kind - no change in tax returns, no lawyers involved, also and, this is critical - no spousal support. Also, some interesting facts! In NYC you can live with someone and once you have done that for ten years you are common law married which means you are entitled to the same rights as someone who is married. In California you are not. So, here we are. Considering a separation and in a murky legal spot where technically I’m entitled to child support but practically I’ve been someone’s domestic partner since 2007 and in that time they have made increasingly more and more money while I made, inversely, less and less.

Yes, there is child support, and - as one lawyer reminded me is THOUSANDS of dollars, which, for a primary parent of a young kid, is something - but it’s the same kind of not enough you’ve been getting all along.

Let’s talk, then, in detail about marriage, which is, of course, more than just technical. I do not do the many things a married woman is expected to do. I do not cook my partner dinner. I do not cook him dinner for a variety of reason including 1) I am not a good cook 2) My kid eats at 5pm and I already cook her dinner 3) He’s a vegetarian who also eats fish and I am carnivorous 4) but perhaps the most important point of all is that I DO NOT WANT TO DO THE WIFE STUFF! Wife stuff, to me, is the unpaid, invisible emotional labor that sucks all who sign up for the job into unfairly balanced dynamics in which they don’t leave, even if they HAVE full spousal support, because WHAT WOULD THEIR PARTNER DO WITHOUT DINNER?

I’m fine, however, with the mom stuff. I still do all the child care that’s unseen and unpaid: all the drop-offs and picks-up and relating about school. All the doctors and dentists and discussion about the body. All the playdates and library trips and convos with moms. All the vacation planning and all the holiday planning and all the future wishing, about how and what our lives could look like if it looked its full best. All the emotional work to grow and form somewhat healthy relationships with our past so that someone can be present. In short, I still do a whole lot of the women’s work and it’s work that I love! I just, for now and forever hold my peace, draw the line at dinner.

Oh, and also, I do not engage in long impossible conversations about Work. Conversations about how the man is so bad that we can’t possibly go back, even though we need health insurance and besides, it’s not such a bad place to go. The man gives you lunch, and money for fitness and a future savings and all that’s not bad. I know, I know, it’s a part of the deal. It’s just, and I hate that I think this: it sounds a WHOLE HELL OF A LOT EASIER.

So what does any of this have to do with Art, you might ask, at this point in the newsletter? I’m just going to go out on a limb here and say that I can’t be a mom, and an artist, and wife, at least not all at once, and once I became a mom, I didn’t want to be anything else first. But what I want to be second is a person who writes, and while I think you can be a mom and a writer, a mom and a wife, a wife and an artist, or any combination of 2/3, I do not think that 3/3 physically possible. I DO think, however, that you can be a parent, a partner, and a person with dreams and I think THAT is being done by many people, but more likely by men? But, dear friends, please prove me wrong. I am open! I am willing! I am ready to learn. Just please, dear God, don’t send me recipes.