Christina Blakely looked around the circle of chairs, eyeing up and gathering as much information about these other members as possible. The lady to her left wore yellow pointed spectacles and stood out of the crowd in her bright blue and red polka-dotted dress. An artist, perhaps? Or a children’s entertainer? The woman to her right was almost the opposite, wearing pale-drab colours, mostly shades of grey and black, and she had black circles around her eyes to match. Maybe she worked at night? Or she was a mother to a baby? Of course, she could be simply not sleeping at night for the very reason they were all there.
Christina wasn’t trying to figure these things out for an actual purpose. She wasn’t a spy working undercover to find a thief. She wasn’t infiltrating a secret organisation. She was a stressed and worried woman who kept twisting her fingers together as if she was going to snap them off, trying to distract herself from the twisting happening in her stomach. So, trying to figure out if the woman opposite was in her early 30’s or late 20’s, even though she had very luminescent grey and white hair, was a good distraction from the feeling in her feet telling her to run as far away as possible.
The chairs were finally all full of equally nervous-looking people when a gentle-eyed younger gentleman in a relaxed white shirt and blue tie strode into the room and grabbed a chair from the side of the room. His chair was bigger, more comfortable looking. Christina reconned he must have reserved it for himself because the other chairs had already been out when she arrived half-an-hour early for the meeting. He dragged the chair over, sauntering happily and making a cruel scraping noise on the floor and sat in the spare space next to the woman on her left. The woman now had a packet of balloons in her hand and was fidgeting with them. Christina nodded. A children’s entertainer, then.
“It’s good to see some new faces here tonight, and of course it’s good to see all the people here that I do know. You’ve all made a good right step in getting some help.” He smiled eerily around the room, making sure to twist himself so that even the man sitting two seats away from him and trying to cocoon himself into his hoodie would see his bright, pearly teeth. Christina flinched slightly when he smiled at her. No, far too optimistic a person. Far too big a smile. She hated false smiles, just as much as lies.
“Now, for those of you that don’t know,” he continued, “I’m Mr Brooks, but you can of course call me Rick, or Ricky if you prefer.” He paused to let them take in his smile once again. “Now…”
Christina was figuring at this time that the word ‘now’ must be some sort of catchphrase. A woman in a plaid skirt across from Rick Brooks was scoring a line on a notepad everytime he said it. Christina would have to remember that for next time. It would distract her from his overly-cheerful attitude.
“I know it’s been hard for you for however long. I know you’ve had to make some hard decisions but, the good thing about this place is you’re free to share those decisions. You’re free to get help making those decisions. From the smallest to the biggest, it doesn’t matter. Now…”
Another score went onto the plaid woman’s notepad.
“Who wants to give it a go, eh? Does one of our oldies want to set the ball rolling to show how it should be done?”
There was an awkward silence in the room as all the people who’d previously come to meetings slouched further down in their chairs and stared at the floor.
“Come on, guys. It’d be a big help. Peter.” He turned to the man who’d almost been enveloped by his own hoodie now. “Why don’t you get us started, okay? Tell us a bit about yourself, for those who haven’t heard.”
Peter mumbled, Christina assumed a yes, before pulling the hoodie from over his mouth. “Hi, I guess. Erm—My name’s Peter. Peter Holloway.”
“Hi Peter,” Rick Brooks shouted, cheerily, making Peter flinch.
“Erm—I guess—I was married for ten years. From when I was nineteen. We—erm—We broke up a couple years ago. We had a kid—a daughter—but she—she passed away before we got the chance to know her. Now, I’m all alone. She’s got a new husband, two kids—twins. I guess, I joined this group because I needed help dealing with it, you know? Dealing with being alone again? That’s it.” Peter retreated back into his hoodie.
“Well done, Peter. Do you have anything else to say?” Rick Brooks asked, trying to make Peter talk for longer.
Peter shook his head and slid further down his seat.
“Well, now, okay then. Jenna, why don’t you say something next?”
The woman with the notepad hastily scribbled another score down before starting to talk herself. “Name’s Jenna Hones.” Her voice was deeper than Christina thought it would be, and she spoke very quickly but loudly. “Married thirty years. I turn sixty this year. Got married at twenty-nine. Old for that time. Most people I knew got married at twenty-one, tops. Anyway, I left him, not the other way round. Couldn’t stand listening to him anymore. We have four kids. Twelve grandkids. Love every one of them. It hurt them when we broke up but they knew it was for the best. I came to this group because my daughter, Anne, told me too. Said I needed to get out of the house more. So here I am.” She gestured to herself and then stared at Ricky, checking that was enough.
Ricky clapped his hands, giddily. Christina couldn’t understand how he could be so happy in this bleak, dismal little church hall. “Good job, Jenna. And how’s your new knitting club going?”
“Fine,” Jenna said. “I gave it up. I’m going to crochet on Wednesday instead.”
Ricky actually seemed to deflate for a second. “Well, keep on trying. I’m sure you’ll find something you enjoy. Now, why doesn’t one of our newbies give it a go?” He checked his list of names in front of him as Jenna drew another score. “Nubia? Is Nubia Vasquez here?”
A mousy little woman next to Peter raised her hand. Christina had guessed she was a cleaner, or a stay-at-home Mum, based on the callouses on her fingers and the bleach stains on her dark denim jeans. Her hair fell luxuriously around her shoulders, obviously the one part of her she took great pride in, and she had the trademark sleep-deprived eyes of the group. “Can you skip me?” she squeaked.
“Well, I can, but we’ll all be very disappointed,” Rick Brooks said. “We’d really like to get to know you.” He smiled his big smile and stared her down.
“Okay,” she squeaked and took a long, deep breath. “I’m Nubia Vasquez.”
“Hi Nubia,” Rick said, quieter than he had to Peter which Christina was thankful for.
“I—I’m a midwife,” Nubia said.
Christina was impressed. She thought that Nubia was the more likely she would get right.
“I have three kids: Tariq, Lucille and Pedro. They’re the best thing in my life. I love them to bits. Well, they stay at their Dad’s one week, and mine another, so I don’t see them as much as I want. Their Dad and I got married when we were twenty-three. We had Tariq a year later, Lucille a year after that and Pedro nine months after that. Mathias, their Dad, he wanted more—he wanted more kids. But I couldn’t have anymore. I—I was told by the Doctor—I could die if I had anymore. Thirteen months later Mathias left, to be with another woman. They’re having their first child in a few months’ time.”
“How long ago did he leave?” The colourful woman next to Christina asked.
“Six months ago.”
“He works fast,” the colourful lady said.
Nubia nodded, tears dripping down over her eyelids.
“It’s okay.” The colourful lady stood up and went to hug Nubia.
Peter gave the little woman a pat on the shoulder, allowing himself out of his hoodie whilst he did.
“I just—I didn’t see it coming. It’s all my fault.”
“It’s not your fault,” the colourful lady said, rubbing Nubia’s back as she hugged her.
“You see, this is what this group is all about,” Rick Brooks said. “Supporting each other.”
The woman released Nubia and went to sit back on her own chair. “I know what you’re going through,” she said, speaking to Nubia. “It’s not your fault, I promise. If he moved on that fast then he has his own issues to deal with. You’re better off without him.”
“What about you, Ms…?” Rick looked to the colourful woman.
“Tasha. Tasha Bricks. Miss Fiddlesticks, if you want my stage name. Yeah, I went through a similar thing, sept it was my wife who left. Ran off with another clown—that’s not a put down, she and I were both clowns, you see? We worked the children’s party crowd together. Anyway, she found another clown and decided to be with him instead. She tried to talk me into having this joint thing so she could be with both of us—we could do an act together, you know? I turned her down, so she left. But, I knew, she’d clocked out long before that. So, you know, it’s not your fault, Nubia. Your husband left because of his problems. Not because of anything you did.”
Nubia smiled at Tasha and Tasha smiled back. Christina could see already that the bold, colourful woman and the mousy, timid lady had the potential to go on and become very good friends.
“That’s a good way to look at things, Tasha,” Rick said. “In all marriages, it’s said to fail on both sides of the party, but we all know it’s not as simple as that. Sometimes it is two people equally at fault fifty-fifty, and sometimes it’s more twenty-eighty. But the one thing you should never do it blame yourself for issues the other member has. It’ll only weigh you down and make it harder for you to move on to newer and better relationships—not just romantic ones, but familial ones and friendship too. Thank you for sharing, Tasha. Now…”
Jenna scratched a score again.
“Christina Blakely? Do you want to have a go?”
Christina didn’t answer. Instead, she stared around the circle again, unsure whether she wanted to speak. She felt like she was going to be sick.
“Christina? Is Christina here? Well… I suppose we can move on.”
“I’m Christina.” She’d finally found her voice.
Rick swung round on her with an agitated version of his smile. “Ah, yes, good. Christina? Do you want to have your turn?” he said, threateningly, or at least that’s how Christina heard it.
She sat up straight, brushing away the crease in her silky black trousers. Her long brown hair tickled against the back of her neck but she couldn’t focus on that right now. She breathed long enough to try and calm her stomach and then began. “Hello. I’m Christina Blakely.”
“Hi Christina,” everybody answered. She jumped. Nobody else had answered for the others, other than Rick, so she hadn’t mentally prepared for it.
“Erm—yes—Well, I’m Christina. You can call me Chrissy, or Tina, or Chris. Whatever, it doesn’t really matter. Anything’s better than the expletive nickname my ex-husband gave me, anyway. Yes—well—” She squirmed in her chair, not sure how much sharing was too much sharing. “I married Timothy, my husband, around three years ago, when I was thirty-nine. He was thirty-seven. He wasn’t my first husband. He’s actually my second. I married Rajesh straight out of University, when I was twenty-one. He passed away a few years later and I didn’t even try to date again until I met Timothy. I met him at group therapy, for grievers that is.”
Christina paused, uncomfortable with all of the eyes staring at her. She was wringing her fingers so tightly that they were turning white. “He’d lost his girlfriend. I’d lost my husband. We just clicked. We helped support each other through it. I’d known him eight years before we ever dated. Then, six months later we got married. I think we both regretted it immediately, although we wouldn’t say it. His heart would always belong to Misha, mine to Rajesh. But we never said it. Anyway, three years down and we were taking out all that anger on each other. Yelling, screaming, refusing to come home. We talked about having kids, but neither of us wanted to have the others kid. It was—” She sighed. “Very tiring. Eventually I told him I couldn’t stand it in anymore. He agreed with me and we sold the house and went our separate ways. I haven’t spoken to him since.”
“How long ago was the separation?” Rick Brooks asked.
“We separated just over a year ago, but we stopped living together properly when we sold the house—last February. Two months ago.”
“And what brought you to this Group? Do you still go to your other Group Therapy?” Rick’s voice had lost all falsities and Christina noticed, happily, that he seemed to actually care what she was saying. Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all.
“I still go, yes. Once a month. I don’t know why I decided to go here. I saw your poster on the wall when I was here last for my other Group. I guess, maybe, I thought there was a chance that—well, that somebody would help me to understand why it’s so hard. Why it’s so hard to just be happy with another person.” Tears were falling down Christina’s cheeks no matter how hard she tried to suck them back in.
Tasha made a move towards her. As did Nubia, as did Peter, Jenna and some of the others, but it was the lady in blacks and greys that sat to her right that got to her first, patting her hand and wiping her tears away with the sleeve of her jumper.
“It’s never easy, but it shouldn’t be hard either,” the lady said. “If you really love someone, like you obviously loved Rajesh, you can forgive them for their problems. You can forgive them for everything, but even that shouldn’t come at the cost of your own health. Sometimes the best thing for both of you is to run, rather than fight. And that’s okay. It really is okay.”
Everyone else had, awkwardly gone back to their seats but were nodding their heads in agreement.
Christina smiled, tearily at all of them. “Thank you,” she said.
“That’s okay, Christina. It’s good to get things out,” Rick said. “And thank you Emily. I’m sure we all appreciated your words. Now, would you like to tell us a bit about you and Thomas?”
Jenna hastily scratched the score down on her notepad. Emily moved closer to Christina and pushed Christina’s head gently onto her own shoulder as Christina continued to cry. “Not right now, Rick. Let’s just take a deep breath for a minute, okay? Let’s just all count to ten and then see what happens.”
And so they counted…
One…
Two…
Three…
All the way up until ten, then they took a deep breath and allowed themselves to relax, feeling the numb-tingling sensation they’d all become so accustomed to release from their fingertips. Christina smiled. It wasn’t going to be an easy path but she hoped it would lead to somewhere better.
THE END OF THE STORY OR THE BEGINNING OF A NEW ONE?
This story was written a few years again as I was trying to process a family member’s divorce. Seeing what this person went through, all the thoughts and feelings they expressed and how it has effected them since then, I started to wonder if there were group therapy sessions for people who went through the stress of divorce– and if not, why not? I knew from my A Level Psychology classes that Divorce was listed as one of the biggest stressors a person could face, and a good quantity of people experience it in their lifetime– so why can’t there be a group for people in the same situation to come together and help one another through it? This idea then turned into me writing this story (originally titled simply ‘Divorced’). I hope if you have gone through this that this story reflects your feelings as I tried hard to be accurate to what I’d heard from both my family member and other people I’d heard who’d experienced it growing up. Thank you for reading and I hope you’re having a great day.
Signed,
The Literary Onion
The Literary Onion 