Divorce. A New Family to Build

by Christine Merser

I broke up with my longest relationship last night, or maybe it was early this morning. The love of my parents ebbed and flowed, complicated by their shortcomings and my own inability to figure it all out. I have been married twice, and two other long-term relationships didn’t make it. My daughter is my most cherished relationship, and I work every day in every way I can to be the best mother and partner in whatever she includes me in—that doesn't change. For that, I am so grateful.

But I saw clearly in the dark of night that my longest relationship was with my country. My beloved country. So proud. It was the red thread in the mosaic of my life, running through everything I’ve done. Arranging a school exchange between Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and Pontiac, Michigan, during the Detroit riots to try and bridge the racial gap. Organizing care packages in high school for our soldiers in Vietnam. Being a pen pal to a soldier. Exploring Civil War history with my first husband on our honeymoon—he was from England, and I thought he should know our history. Standing up for America in France when they wouldn’t let us fly over their airspace while we were supporting them. Working in recent campaigns. Teaching a four-part film course on racism at the local movie theater in the small town where I live in Maine. Starting We the People Dispatch as a daily to-do list in the months leading up to last night, because I thought it was my contribution, among others. Teaching my child and stepchildren love of country and the responsibility to serve in whatever way fits.

My love for this country never wavered. Not once. Not even during the Trump years. He was the issue, along with a small portion of Americans who just needed to be told the truth, and it would be okay. Silly, innocent me.

So I woke up this morning, and I know it’s over. Divorced, and you can have it all—all our assets, custody of it all. When the love of your life says they don’t love you anymore, it’s done, and it’s best to move on.

I see clearly now that it was never the relationship I thought it was. Maybe it was decades ago, but slowly, when I wasn’t looking, it changed. Oligarchy comes to mind. It started with money. A few bad men using our family for their own financial gain, rather than for the people in our family. Bill Bradley, the beloved basketball player, who colluded in changing the tax code to protect corporations. And Reagan, loved by my family—the man who began the dissolution of the middle class. Men (mostly) running for office, not out of love for the family we were building, as many before them served, but for the power and money they could obtain, with plenty of days off and little pressure from the rest of the family who either didn’t notice or didn’t care. Remember when Mitch McConnell announced that his sole goal in charge of our family’s future would be to spend every waking moment ensuring nothing got done? What did we do? Nothing, really. Nothing.

I loved my country for seventy-one years. Every day. I wasn’t perfect; I didn’t nurture the love the way I should have. I didn’t go out of my way enough. I didn’t hold those caring for my beloved country accountable, to make sure they took care of it as so many generations did before. Like any marriage gone bad, much of it was being too busy with things that seemed so important at the time but left room for others to come in and change the way my country felt about me, and about so many of those who also loved her. Slowly, over decades, it has come to this moment.

Lest you think you’ve heard the last of me, I will marinate and soldier on in one way or the other. But now, like so many texting and emailing, I am mourning the loss of the longest relationship I loved. Alas.

But, there's life after divorce, and it includes family. Just not in the way family has been for all these years. I’m not sure what that looks like yet, but I am still a part of my family—though, oh, how it has to change. Rearranged. Rebuilt, but differently. We are not one family anymore; we are fragmented but connected. I have to sort through that, and I will.

So you haven’t heard the last of me. But, at the same time, Taylor Swift’s “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” might be where this all ends for me.