Flesh-carving

Meaning something isn't about saying it. It's not even about walking the talk. You can say something, commit to it and direct all future actions accordingly but still not mean it, not feel it (Ahem, loveless marriages).

For me, meaning something has an affective component. The few times that I've really meant something, I felt it to my marrow. So much so that if someone had doubted me, I would have been frustrated. Enough to want to carve out a pound of my flesh and show my non-believer Exhibit A of every living (well, in this case, dying) cell in my body thrumming, marching and screaming to the tune of whatever it is I mean.

I never feel like I really mean something unless I'm willing to carve out my flesh for it.

My uncle just got a divorce (or a legal separation or annulment or whatever it is you get when you get married in the Philippines but your spouse is now in another country and has just realized that it just isn't worth the trouble anymore). Apparently, his commitment to his matrimonial vows has been held increasingly questionable by my aunt. Questions about how much he meant "love and cherish" were raised. Why, specifically and with how much validity? I'd rather not discuss.

My aunt's decision to divorce/separate/annul, to me felt like being hit on the head with a frying pan. It was swift, decidedly not painless and, for the first few seconds before the blunt pain settled in, it left me stunned and confunded (Pardon the shameless thievery from JK Rowling's list of favorite adjectives. I only just saw HP 6).

Even before she got married to my uncle around 15 years ago, I remember my aunt being one of the most well-loved people in the family. She could do anything. She was a doctor, a wide reader, a really good baker and Christmas ornament maker, a badminton player and a scrapbook keeper. She did everything with joy and without ever uttering a single snide remark. She was kind and cool and awesome all at once, like a good guy from "Hey Arnold." Her decision felt completely out of character - well at least that's how it seemed to me and that's why at the start, I felt like things could still be reconciled between her and my uncle.

I genuinely, deeply love very few people and my aunt was one of them. It's been thoroughly unsettling not having been able to say goodbye to her. I haven't seen her since she went abroad six years ago, and have not communicated with her since a year a before the divorce. But I clung to hopes that she and my uncle would work it out or that she would at least talk to the family. But there were no goodbyes or see ya laters or lets keep in touches. No facebook friending or YM adding. It made me feel disposable - like all those times I spent as a kid babbling with my aunt over breakfast or making her cards or going on random excursions meant nothing.

When someone dies, you get to say goodbye. And because death's such a mystery, you get to pretend, no matter how feebly, that the person's still with you, watching over you, or guiding you, or whatever. But when someone is divorced from your life like this, you don't get the same luxury. You know that the person is alive and well, just living separately from you and choosing not to be with you.

I love my aunt, and when I really think about it objectively, I don't doubt that she loves us too. For her to carve us out of her life like this, without a goodbye, without any reassurances, well, that's when I finally realized she meant it when she asked for a divorce/separation/annulment and that things could not be fixed.