Two years ago, I ended a five-year relationship with a man who loved me. Very simply, it wasn’t enough anymore.
Responses ranged from distraught to disappointment to disgust. My aunt cried, and my friend D said it was the most hurtful thing someone could do to someone else; to tell them you no longer love them. My action was inconceivable and inhumane in the eyes of almost everyone.
Except for Binnie. Binnie Kirshenbaum was a library discovery shortly after my relationship ended, and the words from her short story “Courtship” nearly saved me from self-recriminations so painful I could have dashed in front of a bus: “How is it that I, the only daughter of this union, the witness to their keen love their wondrous love, such a love that, for them, is everything, could conclude that for me, such a love would never be enough?”
Oh, other people feel that way too?
Which is the entire point of books. To steal blatantly from Thich Naht Hanh, books awaken us from our illusion of separateness. I read Binnie’s words as my own, and was comforted. Men have more opportunity for this, for the simple reason that there are more male protagonists in fiction, and more successful male authors. It’s also more acceptable for a man to be flawed in the ugly ways that all people are at times – unloving, dishonest, callous, and selfish.
I have yet to read an author that speaks truth to women as candidly as Binnie, who walks the fine line of honesty between ruthless and kind. Her words continued to move me over the intervening years, and I decided to write her a thank you letter a month ago. I told her how much I loved the way she treated her characters.
A week later I received a package, and in it was a note from Binnie and a copy of her most recent book The Scenic Route. It arrived just as an old friend and I realized that we still kept feelings for each other, secret hot-water bottles held to our hearts, despite the space of an entire continent between us.
I read the book in two days of train rides and late nights. Binnie had somehow grown along with me, and the message I took away from this book was as pertinent in my life today as her words in “Courtship” had been to me years ago: “We should’ve said something, even something stupid, something that chanced ruining our lives, because to do something stupid, something reckless, something honest, is to be brave.”
Thanks Binnie. I believe I shall.