The honeymoon is over

My ex-husband adheres to a strict method of hydration. He has eschewed the convenience that the insulated water bottle industry has literally shoved down our throats. Immune to the lure of Hydroflask, Yeti, Stanley, and Owala. He waters himself the old-fashioned way, with a fifty-cent 26-oz plastic tumbler from Target.

Several times a day, he fills it with filtered (allegedly) water from the fridge’s dispenser and discards the empty cup for his next round on the brown speckled granite island. Several times a day, I’d swoop in behind him and move it 3ft over to the “drink section” of our kitchen, the small slab of counter to the right of the stove. His unknowing (allegedly) participation in our domestic dance was a ritual unique to our marriage but recognized by every woman alive.

I need clean sight lines. I need the island to be desolate. I need shiny crumbless counters. I have forfeited every surface of my home to the chaos of my children, but I am stubborn about this territory. My last remaining stronghold.

I swipe away the mess of my life the old-fashioned way. With a tattered dishrag, wrung of the hottest sink water my fingers can stand, and a drop of blue Dawn soap. After I’m done wiping, I crouch down and make myself eye level with the counter to check for missed debris. My mother taught me this. You have to be especially vigilant around the toaster.

When I wash my hair, I collect the dark strands that were trapped in a week’s worth of messy buns, piled on top of my head, unable to shed my DNA onto the pillow, couch, and supermarket floor. I swirl them into a hurricane and leave the nest to dry on the shower wall. My ex-husband would be incensed by the clumps. I’d grab a scrap of toilet paper and trap them like I would a spider, careful not to let it make contact with my skin, and drop them into the wastebasket to extinguish his annoyance.

And so we danced. For fourteen years.

His home is immaculate now. My former home. His girlfriend keeps it so. But sometimes when I drop my girls off, I can’t help but notice the grit on the granite beneath the glow of the always-lit candle and weekly bouquet of flowers. We all have our zones of obsession, and ours must differ.

When I first met my boyfriend, I was easily fooled by his performance of a Man Who Was Different From the Rest. I landed in Raleigh full of hope. We were long-distance, and the miles between us extended the beginning and propped up a version of ourselves that could only endure short visits.