unrealized potential

[bestfrenjun]

in honour of me formally dropping out of the fest, i present: all the formative texts that shaped what was supposed to be.

(i.e. a compilation of olds quotes for divorce mkrn, tentatively titled in love's sight, with commentary)

Now I come to look at love
in a new way, now that I know I’m not 
standing in its light. I want to ask my
almost-no-longer husband what it’s like to not
love, but he does not want to talk about it,
he wants a stillness at the end of it.
And sometimes I feel as if, already,
I am not here—to stand in his thirty-year
sight, and not in love’s sight

the fact that this is the book opener... the already really does it for me, bc of the realization the speaker has that there is a substantial difference in their relationship despite just finding out that her husband wants a divorce. the whole reevaluation of their marriage now that her view of love is different. obviously the pov of this book would be mk's ♡

 

It was as if he were suing for peace,
asking if this could be over—maybe not
just this time, but over.

 retrospection!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! mk once again reevaluating the last 30 years of his life and taking a magnifying glass to the last time they fucked!!!!!!!!!!!!! (i wanted some smut in this fic bc i am who i am i'm sorry)

 

I did not know him,
I did not work not to lose him, and I lost him,
and I’ve told my mother.
…
So the men are gone,
and I’m back with Mom. I always feared this would happen,
I thought it would be a pure horror,
but it’s just home, Mom’s house

don't you just love pacing and repetition. i played around w the idea of mk flying home to see his mom very soon after the proposed divorce (or maybe after the divorce actually happened) and the coming-home-ism of that scene really... SUCKER PUNCH TO ME anyway well-travelled mk going home to his parents can be something so personal

 

And I saw, again, how blessed my life has been,
first, to have been able to love,
then, to have the parting now behind me,
and not to have lost him when the kids were young,
and the kids now not at all to have lost him,
and not to have lost him when he loved me, and not to have
lost someone who could have loved me for life.

they were supposed to have a singular child and thematically it was very important to me that the adult relationship between mkrn and their kid was ok. the someone who could have love me for life ender never fails to hurt it really hurts bro

 

And when I wrote about him, did he
feel he had to walk around
carrying my books on his head like a stack of
posture volumes, or the rack of horns
hung where a hunter washes the venison
down with the sauvignon?

PERFECT SNIPPET FOR MKL WRITER-ISM rj being his muse only to look back at his past work and wonder how that weighed on rj's shoulders. brain-tickling imagery for me

 

I guess that’s how people go on, without
knowing how. I am so ashamed
before my friends—to be known to be left
by the one who supposedly knew me best,
each hour is a room of shame, and I am
swimming, swimming, holding my head up,
smiling, joking, ashamed, ashamed,
like being naked with the clothed, or being
a child, having to try to behave
while hating the terms of your life.

delving into the complicated shame of being divorce, grappling with feeling like mk's failed his marriage and overall his deep dislike for failure in general. i wanted to open the fic with a scene where he's telling his brother who, in perfect contrast, is still happily married.

 

but I thought that all we did
was done in love’s sight.
…
I thought
wherever we were, we were in lasting love—
even in our separateness and
loneliness, in love—even the
iceberg just outside the mouth, its
pallid, tilting, jade-white,
was love’s, as we were. We said so.

MWAH PACING I LOVE THIS SO MUCH............. WE SAID SO. as simple as that. until it isn't.