Page 57 of Dear Ripley

“Because it feels isolating now?”

“Yeah. Kind of. Maybe that it doesn’t yet, but I’m scared I’m spending too much time alone, like I did before, and I’m going to start alienating people again? Does that make sense?”

She smiled slightly, soft and understanding, and nodded. “It makes perfect sense. But I’m sensing that you don’t want to do that again? That you want to continue being part of Jackson Point and your life?”

I nodded, a lump forming in my throat. I liked my life. I’d fought too hard for it to let it go now.

“I think it’s important to acknowledge that this means things aren’t the same as they were before. Back then, you had a lot of reasons for not wanting to be part of the world, for why doing so felt overwhelming and exhausting, and you just didn’t have the energy for that. That’s not what I’m hearing from you today, and that’s huge.”

I nodded. Sometimes when she praised me like that, I felt about five years old. However, it was also something I needed, especially when I was worried. Sometimes, we all needed someone to recognize the battles we'd faced, and the ones we were still fighting, and to recognize how well we were doing with them. I’d learned that was okay in therapy, too.

When it came down to it, I’d learned a lot in therapy over the years. I’d learned a lot in the time without Alicia.

“I just need to figure out how to be around her. Or at least to stop panicking about what’s going to happen when we run into each other.”

Genevieve didn’t call me out if that felt like an odd response to her comment. I supposed she was used to people working through a lot of things in therapy and only saying part of the story out loud. In this case, it seemed like enough for her to understand where I was at.

She pursed her lips thoughtfully for a second. “How does it feel when you run into her?”

Immediately, all of the muscles in my body locked down and my heart rate spiked.Thatwas how it felt. I tried to describe it to Genevieve and, even though I was certain I did a terrible job, she seemed to understand.

She nodded. “What are you afraid is going to happen in those moments?”

I thought about it. There was a lot of physical and emotional panic when I ran into Alicia, but I wasn’t truly certain what exactly I was afraid of.

“That she’s going to speak to me and say something I don’t know how to handle,” I admitted eventually.

“What kind of thing might she say?”

My stomach clenched. Somewhere deep inside of me, I’d known this was what was bothering me, but I hadn’t wanted to admit it. Now that we were here, and the facts were being pulled to the surface, I didn’t have much of a choice but to name them. “That she’s moved on. That she didn’t miss me. That she’s forgotten our life together.” I shook my head. “And it’s silly because we’re both supposed to have moved on. We’re supposed to have full, happy, separate lives.”

“According to who?”

I threw my hands up. “I don’t know, everyone. It’s been eight years, and we both agreed to get divorced. You’re not supposed to still be… Ugh. I don’t know. You’re not supposed to still… care, I guess.”

She watched me carefully. “You’re not supposed to still be in love?”

I liked Genevieve a lot as a therapist, but she sometimes liked to whack me in the face with the exact thing I was trying not to admit. And that was infuriating.

I sighed. “Yes. You’re not supposed to still be in love with your ex-wife eight years after your divorce. Especially when you haven’t spoken to her once in that time.”

“Supposed tois a very loaded term. Nobody can really tell you what you can and cannot do, because everyone, and every situation, is different.”

I laughed once, bitterly. “I think you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who thought still being in love with your ex-wife after not seeing or speaking to her in eight years was an okay and normal path to healing. In that there’s any such thing asnormal.”

She nodded as if she’d been about to point out the same thing. “Everyone else’s opinions don’t matter right now. What matters is that you cannot control your feelings and love is far more complicated than we give it credit for. Especially around something as traumatic as divorce, which, even if it is amicable and agreed upon, is still a traumatic event.”

“Do you think so?” I wished the desperate edge, the need for reassurance, wasn’t so obvious in my voice, but therapy was the place I fell apart, so at least it was only Genevieve hearing it.

She nodded seriously. “Whether it’s amicable or not, divorce is the destruction of a life you’d been building, a future you’d imagined. Almost all parts of that life need to be rearranged and reimagined once a marriage or serious relationship ends. Other people have opinions and feelings about it, and those getting divorced are often left feeling the need to regulate their own emotions for the people around them. And setting boundaries during that time can be difficult—people push back, doubt your words, or fail to understand what you need and are demonstrating. Sure, it comes from a place of wanting to help, but that doesn’t make it any less difficult to deal with when your own emotions are all over the place.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s true.” Hadn’t that been my whole thing? I couldn’t handle being around others because they needed me to react a certain way and not doing so felt like failure and judgment.

“And, on top of all of that, you have all of the conflicting emotions you feel. Sometimes there’s relief, sometimes joy at getting out of a situation that wasn’t working for you. Sometimes there’s the sadness and grief, the feeling of being alone. There’s the question of what happens next. Add to that the legal processes that you’re forced to go through, potential name changes, bank account and bill changes, attending your divorce hearing… and it’s all coming at you really quickly. You don’t have time to parse one set of feelings before another thing is coming in with its own challenges.” She watched me for a moment. “Divorce is traumatic, and it’s okay that it is. It’s okay that healing hasn’t looked the way you thought it was. And it’s okay to have complicated feelings about Alicia. Our job is to work through that and find ways to make things more tolerable for you.”

I sat for a moment with her words. I’d really hoped it would be easier than it was. I’d really hoped that eight years later, I’d be fine.

I took a deep breath. “I guess I just feel silly for still loving her, and for still grieving eight years later.”

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