Barbara Lanciers

Somewhere Redux

I’m a divorcée. It sounds fancy, I suppose. French fancy. Divorcée is the feminine form of the French word for a male divorced person: divorcé. I’m not particularly fancy or feminine, so I’m unsure how preserving my identity in the amber of a failed marital status, no matter how elevated it sounds, helps my healing process. I suppose divorcée sounds adult, which I am—an adult, I mean (46 years old in the throes of perimenopause is painfully adult)—but I don’t feel it. The adult part. The perimenopause part is another story. In my quiet moments, when I think about the fact that I built a whole multifaceted, 20-year life with someone, and the entirety of that life now lives only in my memories, it’s sometimes hard to convince myself the marriage happened, that it was real, that we ever loved each other to begin with. 

My ex-wife is a lawyer, not a divorce lawyer, but a lawyer, nonetheless. Perhaps she felt her general legal knowledge and her proximity to former law school classmates now practicing divorce law would be enough to carry her through the tedious bureaucratic process of cleaving our shared life down the middle; she chose not to seek legal representation. I’m not a lawyer, and I have no divorce lawyer friends. The thought of trying to negotiate the foundation of my future from a place of rubble with no real understanding of what I was up against legally felt too terrifying to contemplate, so I hired a lawyer. Our divorce was an easy one, legally speaking. My ex and I never set foot in my lawyer’s office, never needed to appear in court, never signed paperwork at opposite ends of a long conference room table, the air thick with tension. We didn’t have children together, just two old, smelly beagles she agreed would stay with me. There were no custody battles, no public screaming matches. We were never even face-to-face. Our negotiations took place over three awkward FaceTime calls—just the two of us with intermittent email questions sent to my lawyer for clarification. The process mostly involved printing out hundreds of documents on my ancient HP, signing my name a million times, and paying weekly visits to the notary down the street. When news of my court-granted freedom came after nine months, in May 2022, it was in the form of an email from my lawyer: “It’s over, Barbara. Now you can move on.” Simple, straightforward. If only…

Most days, the pain of severing my life from my ex-wife’s feels like a wound in the middle stages of scarring: mostly healed over yet still tender in the middle, just slightly discolored and taught—only painful when pressed too hard. But every so often and seemingly out of the blue, a wave of grief knocks me to my knees. It’s not necessarily grief over the loss of my marriage; it’s more like grief over the loss of myself, my essence, my light. 

I’m seated at the long, wood dining room table in the split-level house my new partner, Allison, and I share with her two kids, ages six and 12, and our three dogs: two beagles (the ones whose custody my ex-wife relinquished) and a little grey poodle that Allison brought to our relationship from her former marriage. The table sits in front of a picture window overlooking the expanse of the Hudson River in Upstate New York. I’m still in my pajamas with Flock of Seagulls bed head, laboring over the keyboard, attempting to trace and capture the emotional arch of my failed marriage, but I find what I’m actually doing is tracing the subtle, gradual stages of my own disappearance and eventual reemergence. Why did I stay within the confines of that decaying former marital ecosystem for so long? When did I lose myself along the way? Did I arrive lost? Was I somehow conditioned to think living on breadcrumbs was enough? That maybe breadcrumbs were all I deserved? 

***

Coming of age in the 80s and 90s in Detroit first, then Atlanta, I was not a northerner, not a southerner, not a girl’s girl, not a boy. Dumb luck mixed with genetics and a pinch of 80s Midwestern nurture by young, flummoxed parents created an aberration, a child of blurred edges. I was an only child. My parents never gave me the brother I begged for, so I willed him into my cells and morphed myself into a hybrid daughterbrotherson; a neither nor; an in between. 

Music has always been my escape, a calming force, a way to block out negative feelings and imagine myself in another place and time…or in another body altogether. The aural soundscape of my youth blasted from a handheld Sony tape player; its proper place nestled on the top stair of the backyard swing set slide. I laid my undersized back body long on top of the sun warm slide body, wiggling my naked toes in the grass. Boy George’s Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?, Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, Tina Turner’s What’s Love Got To Do With It and Madonna’s Borderline provided the backdrop to my daydreams, transporting me far from suburban sameness to a place where wild hair and radical colors were the norm, a place where defying the confines of gender was met with the devotion of screaming fans. Prone on my slide, I was anyone I wanted to be, resting alone in a clubhouse of freaks and miracles as they sent missives through a plastic box.  

When we were six, my best friend Sarah and I played house in my bedroom surrounded by Barbies and stuffed animals. Because she was the pretty, feminine one, Sarah always played the mom, and because I was the awkward, boyish one, I played the dad. The stuffed animals were our wild brood of misfit children. We’d care for the kids and make pretend meals and hold hands like our parents did; nothing terribly risqué as far as “house” goes. Until one summer day, my mom was on the opposite side of the house gardening in the backyard, and I suggested we play in my parent’s bedroom. We crept in, both barefoot, and cautiously climbed onto the king bed, lying side-by-side amongst the pillows. “Do you know what moms and dads do in here?” she asked. I scooted closer and held her hand in mine. We both turned our heads to look at each other and stared for several moments. “I think they kiss,” I said, hopeful. “Me too,” she said and closed her eyes. I sat up, half-closed my eyes, and leaned in slowly. Just as my lips were about to touch hers, she interrupted: “How long do you think they kiss for?” I thought about the kisses I’d witnessed between my parents in the kitchen or in the car and answered thoughtfully, “Three seconds.” She nodded in agreement and closed her eyes again, waiting. I leaned in all the way this time with no disruptions. Our lips made contact for one—two—three glorious seconds. I pulled back, euphoric, but Sarah’s face darkened, and she quickly turned away. “I think I should go home now.” I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach; I had done something wrong. Something was wrong inside me. This is my earliest consequential memory of shame. I suppose it’s no wonder this shame was tied directly to my fist meaningful experience of my own queerness—the expression of which brought immediate rejection. 

We were Presbyterian in Detroit. Sundays meant itchy white tights, dress shoes that dug red trenches in the backs of my heels, sleeves that were simultaneously too tight and too poofy—and skirts. Skirts are an abomination. The only good thing about church was my father’s singing voice, an inheritance from his Hungarian opera singer mother. Every time the pastor urged our congregation to its feet, I pressed my ear hard against my dad’s leg, soaking in the sonic vibration of his silken baritone. Fellow parishioners turned to watch him, smiling; they scooted closer, leaning in to hear him belt How Great Thou Art and Be Thou My Vision and Blessed Assurance. “Your father has such a beautiful voice!” I’d agree, beaming, relived to belong to something good; relived to be made from someone to be proud of; hopeful that maybe some of what was in him might also be in me.

***

We became Methodists in Atlanta, a most unwelcome development in my pre-teen spiritual life, until I realized a faux zealousness surrounding Methodism could serve as a convenient cover for my obsession with the church youth leader, April Saunders, a tanned, twenty-something horse enthusiast who drove a rusted Ford F-150, lived in torn Levi’s and steel-toed cowboy boots and used her strong, sinewy hands to create paintings of brilliant colors and shapes colliding to form new dimensions on canvas. April was muscled from years of morning runs on Georgia blacktop and hours spent in field and pasture tending God’s magnificent creatures. She seemed a spirit of St. Francis, a holder of all things living, a woman of dirt and mud. 

Every Sunday morning, April sat in the same pew with her husband, a long-haul truck driver looking fellow; I made sure my parents and I sat several rows behind her on the opposite side of the sanctuary—close enough so I could study her every move but far enough away to allow my fascination to go undetected. In between hymns, I let my eyes trail along the curve of April’s cheek, down past the arch of her neck into the line of her collarbone. With my legs squirming against the itch of my skirt, I’d stare at the contours of her skin and dream of what it would be like to lie next to her at night, to wake to the tender warmth and weight of her arms wrapped tightly around my torso. I imagined burying my nose in her stick straight, chestnut hair, curling my fingers against the callouses on her fingertips, gently brushing that piece of errant hair that always migrated to cover her right eye. 

I fell in love with the music of Tracy Chapman, K.D. Lang and Heart in the passenger seat of April’s pickup. After school and on weekends, we’d speed along lonely dirt roads, her notoriously heavy foot kicking up plumes of red dust. We’d belt Fast Car and Miss Chatelaine and Magic Man, me sneaking sideways glances as the wind whipped her chin length hair like a tornado while her hands kept time on the cloth covered steering wheel. 

Under April’s supervision, our youth group often frequented a retreat center in the North Georgia mountains—a sprawling place with ramshackle cabins, a makeshift firepit and barely functioning coffee pots. Our sleeping quarters were rows of metal bunk beds, enough to sleep 16 or so people, crammed into one of the larger wood cabins. April always slept on the top bunk in the center of the room, the perfect vantage point to keep watch over her charges, and I made my nest on the top bunk right next to hers. 

Early one morning, I was pulled from the haze between sleep and wake by the muted beeping of April’s digital watch. It was dark and silent in the cabin except for the rhythmic breathing of my fellow slumbering youth. April sat straight up and began furiously pulling off her sweatpants, quickly switching them for the running shorts she had tucked under her pillow. She then grabbed the backpack she stashed at the bottom of her mattress and pulled out a pair of worn Nikes. As she laced them up, I silently waved my hands to declare myself game for adventure. April beamed and began furiously waving her hands back, pointing to her shoes, mime-asking if I had brought sneakers. I nodded yes. She reached deep into her backpack and tossed a crumpled T-shirt my way. After assessing the state of my sleeping shorts, deciding they would do, she motioned for me to follow her. We climbed quietly down our respective ladders, trying hard not to disturb anyone, and slowly crept out the door, into the fog of the mountain morning. “Look at that,” April whispered, pointing to the mist rising over the tops of the Georgia pines as it twisted against a backdrop of faint pinks and purples. The air was crisp, pregnant with the humidity that would most surely arrive with the afternoon sun. Then, suddenly, there it was, a sliver of the sun’s crest, slowly rising, casting a blanket of the most vibrant reds, oranges, and purples. I held my breath, captivated by the spectacle. April turned and brushed the side of my face with her thick, calloused fingers, “Try to keep up, kid.” And she playfully took off running. 

I followed closely behind, straining to match pace. At that point in my life, I had never run more than the distance of a basketball court, but I was naturally athletic, a genetic gift from my father, and April seemed to understand the edges of my physical limits. As our feet found their way into a steady groove under the canopy of trees, through underbrush, following the edges of a worn hiking trail, I zeroed in on the muscles of her neck and shoulders, watching how they tightened with her deep inhales and eased with each exhale. My calves burned, beads of sweat collected at the base of my neck and under my armpits; I surged in speed to run alongside her in lock step. She glanced down at me and chuckled, “You’re doing great, kid! A real natural!” Kid is what she always called me—and Babs. Butterfly wings gently brushed the side walls of my stomach every time she called me Babs; it felt intimate, a shared loving gesture between the two of us, a sign of her affection. April was my first love. It was unrequited. Even though I knew there was no future, no place for us—not in the way I wanted—I couldn’t help but feel that, somewhere buried in the back of her subconscious, she daydreamed about what I’d be like when I got older. If we had met in another time and space, April might very well have been the love of my life. 

We quickly turned a steep corner down a loose part of the path, and I slipped slightly, grazing my fingertips against hers, sending goosebumps to the part of my arm where my bicep met the sleeve of her oversized, borrowed T-shirt. I touched my fingers to my lips and shivered. “You cold?” I shook my head no, embarrassed. She smiled and squeezed the back of my neck. At the feel of her touch: a throbbing, twisting ache. Our shoes crunched against the trail in tempo. We were alone, just the two of us, two hearts nestled amongst the majesty of the mountains. April could have chosen any member of our youth group to spend that morning with, but she chose me; I never felt so special. “I love you,” I blurted breathlessly, hopefully. “Oh, kiddo, I love you, too.” And then she paused, uncomfortable. “You make me so proud.” And, with that, she pulled ahead down the trail. 

***

I first heard the song Galileo by the Indigo Girls when I was 12 sitting in the passenger seat of my father’s yellow Volvo station wagon in the parking lot of the nearby Winn Dixie in Peachtree Corners, Georgia. He was taking his time procuring the list of dinner ingredients for my mom, and I was patiently waiting, allowing myself time to daydream while listening to the din of the radio. It was early summer, and all the windows were rolled down, the humidity creating a mist across my forehead as pollen blanketed the hood of the car. I was alone with my thoughts, my thighs sticking to the faux leather seats, when the first chords from Amy Ray and Emily Sailers’ guitars came dancing through the Volvo’s speakers. It wasn’t just the chords that resonated, it was the combination of those two voices: high and low, soft and hard, feminine and masculine. Amy’s voice with its low hum, hard edge, gravel undertone, made me feel, at first, euphoria and then that now familiar feeling, shame. I scrambled to turn the volume down so no one could hear what I was listening to. She sounds like a boy, I thought. That one sounds just like a boy.

On the cover of Rites of Passage, the album that features Galileo, Amy and Emily stand side by side wearing black T-shirts and serious faces. Emily’s hands are painted white, accented with small black and red geometric designs, as is half of Amy’s face. I studied the unpainted contours of Amy’s face with its hybrid feminine and masculine features. Something about her was unmistakably male, and it undergirded her entire female person. Amy looked like what I imagined my soul did—not quite a girl, but not a boy either. I listened to Rites of Passage obsessively until I nearly wore out the CD. At night, I would lie alone in bed with headphones on imagining those songs pouring out of me in front of an adoring audience. I dreamed of being beloved, embraced by strangers. The seventh track on the album is a cover of Romeo and Juliet by Mark Knopfler sung by Amy; this song ignited a revolution in me. To hear a woman’s voice croon a love song to another woman with such ache and desire was confirmation that maybe I wasn’t as monstrous and disgusting as I thought. There were other girls like me out there, and if they could teleport their words through suburban Atlanta radio waves, maybe, just maybe, there was a place for me somewhere. 

***

My parents moved from Atlanta to Columbus, Ohio right before my sophomore year of college. Thanksgiving morning that year, I woke up and, immediately, my whole body began trembling. Every muscle was seizing. I felt the blood drain from my head and fill my chest. Because this was not my childhood home, I was sleeping in the guest room. My mom opened the door just a tiny peak to see if I was still asleep. Her eyes landed on the shaking mound of blankets in the middle of the bed: “Are you okay?” The concern in her voice triggered a violent episode of full body sobs. She settled in next to me on the mattress. “What’s going on?” I took a deep breath. “Mom, I…I like girls.” She was silent for several minutes, and then: “I love you no matter what.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Your father’s going to blame me for this,” she croaked. Blame dipped straight into my well of shame. I knew she was right—I had long imagined my father’s anger; he’d need to direct it somewhere. Certainly, having a gay kid was something to be ashamed of, a shame that needed a receptacle for blame. I tried to console her, to console myself. “Mom, I’m still me.” She stared at my face blankly, searching for recognition, but I was now a stranger. This heap of blankets with a snot-encrusted face was an unfamiliar, potentially dangerous creature. She asked if I was going to cut my hair short and wear boys’ clothes. I assured her that wouldn’t be the case, which is ironic because I now have short hair and wear boys’ clothes. “You have to tell your father.” This was the dreaded moment of truth. She slowly guided my shaking body down the hall into my dad’s study. “Honey, Barbi has something to tell you.” He looked up from his desk chair; his face went white with concern: “What’s wrong?”

As I repeated the same tentative words, revealing the truth of my queerness to my father, a shadow crept across his face. The vein in his right temple pushed to the surface, pulsing in time with his quickening heartbeat. He asked me if I had a girlfriend, and I told him yes: “Well, did you fuck her already? Because if you fucked her already, there’s no hope.” I had. Fucked her already. And he was right: there was no hope. 

I spent so many years thinking I was ugly, an abomination, unlovable. My father’s crass intrusion into my private sphere was cruel, demeaning, a device used to make me feel small. It confirmed all my fears and intuitions: I was unlovable. I hung my head and counted my tears as they dropped the floor. He wanted to punish me. I was disobeying him. “I taught you better than this.” He scowled in my direction, his words dripping with disgust. “I never want to meet any of your girlfriends. You will never bring any of them—not one—into my house. I will never accept this about you.” Then he threatened to stop paying my college tuition. He needed to exert control. He thought he could force me to behave according to his standards if he set the parameters. It worked. I took it all back, said I was confused, said I needed time to sort myself out. 

Nine months after the first time, I didn’t cry or shake the second time I came out. It was after a summer fling with a woman almost a decade my senior, one of the directors at a training program I attended for young actors in Upstate New York. This woman was bold, a bohemian of sorts, quirky in her clothing choices and phraseology, more masculine of center, someone who knew exactly who she was and made no concessions for the discomfort of others. She schooled me in the pleasures of physical intimacy. She made no bones about the fact that she adored me, that she relished her part in shaping my identity while helping me fully understand and realize my desires. She encouraged me to come out once and for all. “Look, this is who you are. You owe it to yourself and your parents to live your truth—to fully live your truth.” She was right: I was deserving of living my truth, and if that meant having to drop out of college and exist without the support of my family, so be it. Shortly after I returned to my parents’ home in Ohio to prepare for my junior year of college, I came out again. I told my mom first, but I used clear, decisive language: “Mom, I’m gay.” She wasn’t surprised. Again, she said my father was going to blame her. She repeated the question about hair and clothes. This time I didn’t assure her of anything. I didn’t deny anything. I just kept repeating, “Mom, I’m gay.” Like a mantra. Like a chorus. Like an aria. “I just don’t want your life to be hard,” she said. “And this is going to make it so much harder.” 

My father didn’t express a wish for my life to be easier; he simply shut down, shut me out. He repeated his threat to stop paying my college tuition—to remove me from the one place I was beginning to feel comfortable, to keep me from the friends who were now my closest confidants. I tried to be brave in the face of this Earth-shattering rejection, but the daily assaults of my father’s shunning shattered my sense of self and backed me into a corner of self-isolation. We stopped speaking, except for cursory exchanges, for about a year. During that time, I lived my life in the margins with no idea if or when the bottom would fall out. I went to class each day wondering if it would be my last as an enrolled student. I became withdrawn and began skipping classes and rehearsals. This was my protection—a life I was just starting to think I could live in color had abruptly faded. 

My early 20s were marked by a loneliness so deep it cut right to the bone, exacerbating my life-long feelings of being an outsider, of living in an ugly body whose desires were wrong and against God’s plan. Decades later, I now understand my father had been societally pre-conditioned to react the way he did. I’m not excusing his behavior in any way, but I’m now able to put his and my mom’s initial response into a larger context. After years of healing and working on our relationship, we’re now able to discuss that time and their individual reactions in a way that’s no longer charged but rooted in curiosity and empathy. My coming out exacerbated my father’s insecurities surrounding his abilities as a parent. Society told him he failed; my body and its desires confirmed this failure. His own shame caused him to abandon me in plain sight, something he has since apologized for and is appalled by. My mother, too, has apologized. I think they both wish they could wave a magic wand and re-do that period to have a different reaction; unfortunately, the scars will always be there—the terrible memories, the insecurities, the feeling in my body still when I wake up in the middle of the night choking under a weighted blanket of dread. 

With time, attentiveness, and a willingness to listen and learn, minds and hearts can be opened and changed: my parents have become among my greatest champions. When my marriage began circling the drain, it was my parents who stepped in to provide solace, support, hot meals, and sympathetic ears. They held me as I sobbed, and they continuously reminded me that I was never that ugly child I imagined in my head…I was always worthy, always beautiful, always imaginative. I was always worthy of love—even when they didn’t give it. 

***

I began dating my ex-wife when I was a senior in college, right after I came out to my parents. We got married several years later, shortly after equal marriage was legalized in Massachusetts in 2004. I was desperate for love, desperate to belong to someone, desperate for the autonomy to begin building my own family; and I didn’t think enough of myself to choose someone who cracked my heart open, who gave me sweaty palms and a racing heart, someone who felt like the missing piece. Instead, I morphed a woman who was my confidant, my intellectual equal, my platonic playmate into my girlfriend, then partner, and, later, wife. Who better to build a life with than your best friend? 

In 2021, when it became clear my marriage wasn’t salvageable, I began to panic. It started as one panic attack, which seemed understandable at the time. Whose body wouldn’t react to the realization that the stasis of everyday life had been forever altered? But it didn’t stop…one attack bled into another until my body was engaged in an all-out war against itself. It felt like the floor had fallen away—I was left out there floating with no moorings, no protection. When Allison entered my life, this feeling became entwined with the euphoria of new love, the overwhelming wave of erotic desire, the intensity of discovering every inch of a new lover’s body in all its exquisite detail. My life was falling apart just as everything around me, all the colors, were becoming more vibrant, all things sharpening into focus. I vacillated between being unable to stand because of the hollowness in my chest, feeling safer huddled in a tight ball, to being unable to uncurl the goofiest of smiles because of a passing thought of Allison and one of her quirky observances of life’s eccentricities. I was grieving the loss of what I thought was my stability while falling deeply, madly in love with the most beautiful human I had ever encountered. It was a constant state of whiplash. Even now, there are times where I suddenly feel the floor has disappeared, there’s nothing to ground me, and that familiar, terrifying flutter starts in my chest. I make myself as small and tight as possible until the waves of panic pass or until Allison’s hand comes to give me grace and grounding. Her skin is healing. Sometimes we strip naked and hold each other: no words—just the suspended animation of breathing in one another’s softness, silently absorbing one another’s love.

The house we now share has an unobstructed view of the Hudson River; the large picture window off the dining room, where I’m sitting at the table writing, makes the water look like you could walk right out and wade in, but the property line and the shoreline don’t meet. It’s a trick of the eye. The actual shoreline is way down the hill, through a sliver of forest, past a condo complex and a marina. An astrologer friend recently told me that places where shorelines exist—where water meets land—can be places of volatility, of constant energetic motion. Better to have the view and not the access.

As I sit here writing, I hear Allison humming softly in the kitchen as she makes breakfast for the kids; it’s some inner song only known to her. She hums when she’s happy. Her son does, too, but he also hums when he’s concentrating or bored or hungry—he’s a hummer. She’s a happy hummer. As I listen to the vibration of her voice, I feel it so clearly: the place I’ve always longed for is right here; the time and place where I can be fully myself, love myself even, is right here in this home we’ve made together.