Nobody knows what they’re going to want in the future. It’s impossible to know, so you make choices based on the things you want now. You plan your life on the assumption that future you will be exactly like current you. But nobody is the person they start out as.
When we were in college, I wanted John Bright more than I’ve ever wanted anything. He was dazzling then, the absolute most of everything. He was the most charming and the most handsome, the most idealistic and the most ambitious. I harbored not a shred of doubt that this man would go on to realize all his dreams—and I was right about that. What I didn’t know then is that realizing one’s dreams changes a person. Ambition becomes success. Wanting becomes deserving. And the humility of desperation yields to hubris.
John could probably say the same about me. I didn’t know that I wanted to be the wife of a successful politician (or I wouldn’t admit to knowing), but I liked all the trappings of it. I liked the parties and accolades, the name recognition and the spotlight. The only thing I didn’t like about the job was that it forced me to know that I am the sort of person who likes such things.
So maybe we were both a little taken aback by our slight distaste for each other in this otherwise successful life. We were enjoying almost everything about the path we’d created except for the mirror we each forced the other to look into. Which is why, ever the optimists, we turned off that reflective function of our psyches and forged ahead as partners; a sort of romantic collusion. It wasn’t intimacy exactly, but it was symbiosis, and it worked extraordinarily well for us.
It didn’t happen overnight, of course. The transformation took years, and it was broken up by the ceaseless schedules of parenting, fund-raising, campaigning and more parenting. The slow transition from lovers to coconspirators was felt as a series of quiet betrayals and disappointments. He didn’t want me anymore, and so he went elsewhere. And when John’s affairs got to be too much for me, I turned off the part of my heart that could keep breaking, and I decided to break his in turn. Revenge isn’t a pleasurable motivation for sex, but it’s an emotion, which is sometimes the best you can hope for.
We told ourselves that our children didn’t see any of this, but I suspect they did, in their own way. We didn’t submit them to any explicit traumas, but nor did we demonstrate a life of love. We didn’t provide a marriage to emulate. I’ll never know how regretful I should feel about my choices because the only thing I’m sure of is that parenthood is a job no one gets right. I don’t know if I should wish I got it wrong in some other way or if this way is comparable to all the other wrong ways. Maybe a more sensitive mother would know the answer to this. I know I sacrificed some feeling on this path. I suppose I regret that: the dulled senses.
And so the person I’ve become is a surprise to me. But I’d grown so accustomed to this strange person that I was most surprised when, this week, I discovered a razor-sharp edge inside myself. Years after all the feelings and appetites had been dulled, a raging passion revealed itself.
I’m not proud to have burned down the garage. There may have been other ways to change course. But I did what had to be done for my family, and that’s a thing I can’t say I’ve always done before. It felt good.
This week—when the truth about Philip’s father was revealed, and the press swarmed and John recommitted himself to his campaign—I realized that, this time, I would sooner die than let my children suffer. It was as if all my repressed doubt about the harm we inflicted on our children throughout their lives surged up as one great fireball of remorse. And I said no more. No more campaign—which John was clearly planning to move ahead with—and no documentary about my family. No more pain for my children. No more pain for Philip...or less pain, anyway. I wanted to take our story back, and that required something radical.
It’s a strange thing, to set fire to your life to mend it, but I still think it was the best way out. It worked. John acquiesced and officially ended the campaign. The documentary that would ruin our lives was effectively murdered. All the pending catastrophes were thwarted. We get a reset.
It’s certainly a reset for me. I can already see that my husband and children treat me differently. They regard me with the sort of cautious respect one holds for powerful lunatics, which is interesting and new. Maybe I’m imagining it, but my children seem to like me just a little bit more this way.
My younger self might expect that I’d be done with John, too, after all that has happened between us. But my younger self knew nothing about me. I’m not as good as I thought I was, and I’m not as brave. I summoned all my strength for that moment of fierce righteousness on behalf of my children. There wasn’t much left after that.
The truth is, we made this life together and it works. So we’ll go back to our pretty house and powerful friends. John will retire, but he won’t disappear. We’ll use our clout to have the authorities drop further inquiries into the fire and let it all fade into the past. You don’t have to blow up your whole life to save one piece of it.
I didn’t become a good and brave person this week. I just became a mother. I wish I’d done it sooner, but I’m not dead yet.