Owly

In Divorce, Who Gets the People?

In divorce, the balance sheet can somewhat cleanly divide up the assets, but no one talks about who got the people.

When the marriage of PamaJamas ended, Pama disappeared from our lives. We aren’t entirely sure why. We love her anyway.

We got Jama.

She responds to our texts. She welcomes our invitations. She keeps us informed.

And yet, three times now, Jama has made plans to come visit us. Three times she’s canceled. Each time she texts to apologize, calls herself a bad friend, gets caught in the shame spiral of flaking again.

There’s something about divorce that makes people feel like they're contagious. Like their grief is a mess they shouldn’t spill on anyone else. So they ghost. Or they cancel. They apologize too much. They brace for judgment that’s not coming.

We know this because we were it.

So, every time, we just remind Jama—we get it. We’ve been there. We know that heaviness, intimately. And we just keep saying what we wish someone had said to us: You’re just in the thick of it. And we’re still here. We love you, no matter what.

Because when you’re going through a divorce—you are stripped of more than just a partner. You lose people you didn’t expect to lose. Sure, you expect the in-laws to stay loyal to their own. But there are others you never expect to vaporize or fade into echoes.

In my divorce, I lost my extended family. My aunts and uncles and cousins I grew up with celebrating every major holiday and birthday at large gatherings around Grandma’s dining room table just faded to nothing. None of whom are divorced, who live by the unwritten understanding that “divorce doesn’t happen in our family”. Suddenly I became the “red-headed step-child”, in a family of red-heads!

In terms of friends, it’s the people who’ve been through it that tend to show up the most. It’s almost uncanny how often the friends pick their teams exactly opposite of how you might expect. And it’s the people you didn’t expect who stay.

Divorce doesn’t just separate a couple—it rearranges the whole web. And when that happens, all you can do is keep showing up. Quietly. Repeatedly. With candy. With laughter. With cinnamon rolls, maybe. With no pressure to talk about it or make it better. Just presence.

So this is for anyone going through it. Anyone who’s lost more than the marriage. Anyone who’s looking around and realizing the people they expected to hold them… vanished. And someone surprising who stayed.

We know that story. We’ve lived that story. And we’re holding a place at the table, whenever you’re ready to come back.

Hobbit

In the life before Owly came into my life—back when my marriage was held together with duct tape—there was a kitchen sink that wouldn’t drain. So, I did what any person with limited plumbing skills would do—I called a plumber.

No, that’s not what I did. I kept a bucket under the leak.

Using all the powers of my imagination, I tried to fix it many times, and sometimes I got temporary relief. Most of the time I used an extraordinary amount of caulk. And duct tape. It was an ongoing comedy of fixes that were errors in disguise. Today, my attempts to fix the drain would be a candidate for a viral video somewhere—the kind where the narrator says unflatteringly sarcastic things about the “solution” followed by a laugh track.

There were a couple positives about this ongoing plumbing experiment—

One, I discovered moth flies grew on the scummy water. Moth flies made excellent specimens for the section of decomposer/scavenger insects we reared for demonstrating the functions of insect behaviors. And two: as it turns out, the moth fly life cycle makes an oddly precise metaphor for what happens to friendships after a breakup.

I will explain.

It may help to understand that a moth fly immature stages of life semi-aquatic. They live within/under the biofilm scum and feed on the bits of scum (or crumbled Cheerios, if you like to feed them directly). Not quite as fancy as koi, but the principle is in the same ballpark.

And interestingly, during a moth fly’s pupal phase, when they transition out of their aquatic phase, they will attach themselves via breathing tubes (the end of which are called spiracles, which are the openings of their breathing siphons) that extend just over the top of the scum surface so they can breathe.

This setup is rather fragile. If the water is disturbed before they emerge as winged adults, they will drown. Hence, why these creatures prefer stagnant water.

During this time in my life, there was a day when about 20 of our neighbors were in our house. They were generously spending a weekend day helping to clean up broken glass after nearly everyone of the windows in our house was broken—for the second time that summer. One of our neighbors was a carpenter and generously offered to help steady the pipes under the sink by creating a wooden support.

I was devastated that anyone else outside the family would see the gunk under the sink. For a moment. This brings up a third positive about this plumbing experiment—for as I cleared out my moth fly larvae breeding center under the soggy wet non-functional under-the-sink area, I was red-faced with embarrassment AND laughing at the situation for how absurd this all was.

I remember thinking to myself: “I will never be ashamed again.”

Two of our friends—Sean and Nykol—were there that day. They’ve reached out to us when they need help moving, painting, or music for a Mom’s funeral. We’ve asked them for help moving, assembling garage shelves, and for custom stained glass that Nykol creates with Sean’s help sometimes. We see each other about once every couple months and sometimes we see Robyn Hitchcock together or sneak a little sci-fi that the womenfolk have little or no interest in.

I have known them for over two decades. Owly is working on her first decade in about 2 or 3 years.

When a scummy relationship ends, some people disappear. Stuff gets murky. It happens. Divorces are not pretty. There’s a lot of sloshy, under-the-sink stuff that can’t always be fixed.

And then there are those friends who stick around. The ones who keep showing up despite the muck. They are the ones who help you breathe through the scum.