After a struggle to let go of my old ideas of me and Sayer that really took years, I managed to move on. My account of Sayer writing the end of our marriage as a film is only a description of events, not an explanation. The marriage really ended because our identities had been too unformed when it began; we had simply been too young, auditioning a version of love that had been culturally sold to us in the films we’d seen and in the books we’d read. We had searched for adult versions of ourselves in each other and found only partially focused images of our desire reflected back. The only thing that could have prepared us to be together, as I see it now, was the end of our marriage, but that led us apart on different paths.

I just left the character in my film hanging in mid-air, in the midst of his triumphant dive. He’s going to accomplish it. But before he accomplishes it, I have to accomplish it. I have to figure out how to draw the damn movement. And I left him hanging because I couldn’t get it right today.
I saw Sayer yesterday for the first time in weeks. We went out to the meadow that we like above the Willow River in Wisconsin and we buried a photograph of ourselves. It was one of the first pictures of us together. As the dirt began to fall on those innocent, smiling faces that had been the younger version of us, I had the urge to dig them out again and I said to Sayer, “Oh, shouldn’t we save them?” But we didn’t and a moment later I felt happier and relieved and simply walked through the meadow hand in hand with Sayer, not talking. We’re not together anymore; everything has changed. Even the river that we knew has changed. The dam that we used to walk across is gone.
I have a strange sense tonight that somehow none of this is personal or even real. That there is a larger pattern at work that drives us through the changes necessary to us. Falling in love with Sayer and losing my connection to Sayer are just waves in the pattern. We are the momentary shape, the medium in which the wave takes its form, but we are not essential to the energy. If I could just relax into the necessity of it, the inevitability, it would be easier than trying to chase down a goal, trying always to force circumstances to my purpose.