Transcript

I’m Ada Limón and this is The Slowdown.

Have you ever been going through something hard and felt a sense of relief? Like at least it’s happening. At least a decision has been made. Whether it’s a move or a new job or a new love or even the end of love. There’s something there that is difficult to name, something like the elation of change.

I remember once sitting on a park bench with a friend who was going through a divorce and everything was so hard for her in that moment. I gave her an apple out of my bag and she cried while eating the apple because she said, she had forgotten how to take care of herself, forgotten to eat.

A year later though, she was triumphant. There was a glow around her.

There’s a Leonard Cohen song lyric that says, “There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in” — that’s what she seemed like to me. Filled up with light. It’s not that the divorce was easy or without its dark cavernous days of recovery, but it’s that a decision had been made and for her that decision meant one thing: freedom.

I’m someone who has never believed people should stay married if they are unhappy. My parents are divorced and they are both tremendously in love with their spouses. I think sometimes the risk of falling in love is mirrored by the risk of ending love. Neither of them are for the faint of heart. I remember once finally ending a relationship that had been toxic for some time and even though I was sad, I was also lighter. There was no longer a voice in my head telling me that I was doing the wrong thing, telling me to have less fun being who I was.

Have you ever had a relationship that ended and afterwards, everyone tells you that they never really liked the person, or at least didn’t think they were the right fit for you? That was that relationship. Here I was thinking we were a good match, and when we split, my friends basically threw a party. After that, I remember thinking for one brief shining moment, how good it was to be in my own skin.

Today’s powerful poem speaks to the release that can come after a relationship has ended. How sometimes it takes an ending to realize you’re just getting started.

Facelift
by Jennifer L. Knox

I met the woman whom I hadn’t seen in years
at a bar with many happy friends around her.
I could tell right away she was different:
flushed as a flower, showing more leg—
and what legs!—smiling with her teeth apart,
breathless as if she’d just run her first
marathon and someone kind had thrown
a shiny silver blanket over her shoulders.
“I’m getting a divorce,” she said, tugging down
the corners of her grin like a too-short skirt,
“it’s a hard time,” she looked away. “But 
a little exciting right?” I asked, remembering
the relief: not knowing what would happen
next, but knowing what would never happen again:
my begging to be loved the way I thought
I could but had no proof. What he said 
didn’t exist: I was all the proof I needed.

"Facelift" by Jennifer L. Knox, from CRUSHING IT by Jennifer L. Knox, copyright © 2020. Used by permission of Copper Canyon Press.