People I imagined on the worst day of my life

Who is there when no one is there

The weeks after my ex-husband left me were not what you might imagine. There were no floods of tears, glasses of wine, or watching Netflix with my mother and cursing his name. There was no grief, or sadness, or even shock.

There was only injury.

The pain was hot, hard, and constant. Each morning, it woke me up like a surgical patient. I’d spend the day walking from room to room, carrying this thing-on-fire that was my body. It is not possible to lay down a thing-on-fire and make it watch Netflix.

I needed help.

I had no family. I had no friends in the city. I had no one I dared fully confide in, except my best friend in California who probably saved my life.

I decided to imagine people.

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The people in objects

I woke up each day in the same bleak room with the same sick heart.

I was not able to leave my bed at first, but I could look at the objects around me.

Bed, plant, curtains. Wall. Sink.

I would remind myself that lots of forces combined to bring these objects to their exact location at this exact time. And that some of those forces were love.

There wasn’t asbestos in the walls. There wasn’t typhoid in the water.

I didn’t try to conjure up any gratitude in my body. There was none.

But I let myself observe some facts: There was somebody who wanted people — and I am a person — not to die from the water. I am a beneficiary of the actions they took. There is love in that.

I would tune into that love. I did not drown in it; hardly. I could barely feel it. But I told myself, you can just let one per cent in. And I could.

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My last healed ancestors

When I reach towards the first few generations behind me, there is more pain than warmth.

My father is Bedouin, from the Middle East. He described his own father as terribly angry. He told me recently that this might have been due to the large metal plate that became lodged in his head during a war in 1968. He also showed me photos of where he grew up. Later, I cried:

(The writing on the wall reads, “God”)

My mother is from Sheffield in the North of England. The deprivation she experienced was extraordinary, and unspeakable.

I had to imagine my way back beyond all of this. Past my parents, past my grandparents, past the generational pain I’d spent years being strangled by.

I imagined my tribal great-great-great-grandmother. Perhaps she was alright. Perhaps she had green eyes like me. She probably had hopes for her descendants. That they would eat. That they would have shelter. That they would not be killed.

That a child of her blood was alive, indoors, fed, healthy, not cold, and not dead was not nothing. I let myself feel her pleasure and pride. A few per cent at a time.

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My spiritual ancestors

I felt strange enough that even my healed ancestors didn’t feel like my full lineage.

I imagined Mozi — an ancient Chinese philosopher who argued for jiān ài — impartial care and universal love for all. If everyone saw each other’s families as their own, he said, who would steal? Who would wage war? He was mocked, and persisted. Mozi, you are my ancestor too. My work is part of your legacy, even if my husband has left me.

I read about Averroes — a medieval Arab who might not have shunned me. He wrote, in anguish, that much of the poverty and distress of his time arose from the fact that women were kept “like plants”, valued only for their fruit. Their capacities remained tragically unknowns because they had never been given the chance to develop them. He was exiled. His books were burned. Averroes, thank you for rooting for me. My faculties have been allowed to develop, even if my husband has disappeared.

I read about Hildegard of Bingen — a medieval German abbess (and badass) who wrote about what she called viriditas — the life-giving force. She believed that every person has a moral duty to maintain this force within themselves. To let yourself shrivel — through self-punishment, neglect, or despair — was to sin against creation. Hildegard, my ancestor; even if my husband has disappeared, I will try to resist despair.

I don’t think it matters much that all of these people are dead. There is nothing mystical about the fact that our intentions shape the world after our death.

It is a reality that allows us to join whatever lineages we choose.

If this sounds like a history or law lesson; it wasn’t. I googled these people’s faces. I allowed myself to feel belonging. Even I was alone and in pain, things I cared about had been cared about before, and my spiritual ancestors were rooting for me.

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My future self

Not in the “do it for your future self” way that motivates eating well and sleeping early, to care for yourself in five years. I could not imagine myself in five years.

What I had was a very specific protocol I enacted during the worst of the worst times. It went like this:

• I would lie in bed — dreading sleeping and dreading waking up

• I would plan what I was going to do the next day; often a walk around the meadow

• I would specify a particular moment in that walk, and simulate it in realer-than-real fidelity I would picture, for example, the exact moment my hand would make contact with the gate. I would feel the cold of the metal and hear the creak of the hinge. I would rehearse the moment until it felt more real than my bedroom.

• I would then infuse into it all of the love my tomorrow-self could muster. I’d package up all of her love and compassion, and wrap myself in it and sleep.

• The next day — without fail without fail without fail — I would go on that walk. I would put my hand on the gate. I would gather the love, and I would send it back. Not mechanically, but with every loving intention I could find. I would simulate, in realer-than-real fidelity, my bedtime self, and I would love her.

In this strange way, I was able to send love across time — from myself to myself.

I could receive love in the evening from the me who wouldn’t exist until the morning. And, knowing that she would be there for me, made the love deeper and more soothing than anything my bedtime-self alone could create. I gave myself the use of two hearts, not one.

(A photo I took for my past self at the time)

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This period in my life was the most painful I have ever gone through.

It was also the clearest demonstration I have ever had that love is not the feeling between two people. It is a property of reality that sometimes becomes visible. It became visible to me when the personal love I was so desperate for was destroyed.

I had been used to finding love through a window — my ex-husband, my work, my friends. And I believed that I needed to have enough of these things around me to have enough love. Most of my windows closed in those weeks after he left. I expected annihilation. And I came to see that I, too, was a window, and that the light was everywhere.

There’s a refrain that keeps running through my head. Holy, holy, holy.

In Hebrew, triple repetition isn’t emphasis in the usual way (e.g. very, very good). It is a superlative, yes, but it also means something like in every direction. Saturated. Holy in all directions.

I found love going backwards in time. I found it in the walls around me. I found it in my future. In every direction. In everything.

I didn’t bask in it, I didn’t bathe in it, I spent a year in recovery from the betrayal, but whenever I looked, I found it — and that knowledge has made its way into my bones.

I wouldn’t recommend my way of finding this out, but the conclusion was unmistakeable:

Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.

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With thanks to Mark Estefanos. For then and now.