The issues can be quite enticing, but the cost too high…cancel my subscription to divorce drama!
I was in the midst of stuffing a load of clothes into the dryer when I heard the knocks on my door. I don’t normally open my door without first looking, but I was expecting a package, and to find a man in a brown uniform holding a box on the other side of the door. Instead, a pimple-faced teenager with a voice struggling to find its correct octave greeted me with a plea to buy magazine subscriptions. Ugh!
I’ll admit that I enjoy a good browse through the glossy pages of a fashion or home magazine while killing time on an airplane or doctor’s waiting room. I have, in the past, bought my own subscription to magazines; but, normally, I consider them to be a bit of a luxury because I rarely read through all the content before they get tossed or stacked in a pile (to probably be thrown away at a later date).
It occurred to me, as I fumbled for an excuse to free myself from the guilt-induced trap the adolescent magazine salesman was laying for me, that subscriptions have much in common with divorce drama! For now, I’d prefer to take a pass from both!
How are magazine subscriptions and divorce drama alike?
They are expensive. “Two years for the price of one! Just sign over your soul and your sanity on the dotted line, and easy monthly installments will be withdrawn to consume your time, patience, focus, joy, and everything else it can sink its evil clutches into!” Never mind the legalities of the situation, just consider the emotional tax of ongoing conflict and drama!
You can’t find your way out of them. If you need to speak to someone who knows something, who can answer your questions, or help solve your problems, good luck with that! I swear that the name of the game is to dodge questions, being helpful, or even the truth. It may take a magnifying glass, a lawyer’s interpretation, threats, or hysterics to get to the bottom of each problem. On the other hand, we might be tempted to raise the white flag, and I think that’s part of the devious design!
They’re flashy and tempting. “Look at me! Look at me!” Catchy headlines, glossy photos, juicy gossip, and all the incentive needed to keep watching, engaging, and not moving on. Truly, how often is the hype all that it’s made out to be? How often would we be better off by simply ignoring the enticement to join the audience or become part of the show? They don’t want you to stop caring, they can’t let you move on, and their goal is to render you helpless and dependent.
You’re locked in. Once you’re in, good luck getting out! They suck you in with bargains and promises, then hold you hostage with auto-renewal. In short, those who thrive on drama will always seek to start more, never let you go, and feed on our reactions. The drama (and those who create it) can’t live without our participation or willingness to offer a spotlight to one issue after another…into eternity, if we allow! There’s always a catch, a loophole, or a plea to hang on!
That smell. The sense of smell is linked to memory. A whiff of a familiar food, environment, or cologne can whisk us away to another time or place. If I wanted to smell like Drakkar Noir the rest of the day, I would have raided my ex’s medicine cabinet and rubbed the pheromone of the North American male college student all over myself. Thankfully, this experience can be replicated with a monthly delivery of perfume-assaulted pages designed to transport me to the moment in time when I should have kept walking and not gone on that first fateful date! Who needs a regularly-scheduled smelly flashback?
So many issues. Like clockwork, one new compilation of issues after another is presented for our consumption. Sometimes they strive to make us feel inadequate because we don’t live up to their standards of perfection. Other times, they lead us on with tantalizing headlines that really lead nowhere except to disappointment or more questions. Obviously, it’s their job to always come up with a new angle and way to draw us in. No business is ever settled, the past is always rehashed, speculation reigns supreme, and we are left feeling stirred up and hungry instead of at peace and pacified.
Young man at my door: cancel my subscription to all of your magazines, and all divorce drama! I don’t want to be tied down in invisible red tape, held hostage by another’s need to always be the center of attention or tricked into renewing my interest in my ex’s recurrent issues!
If divorce is about achieving freedom, then cancel my commitment to the trap of dysfunction, guilt, or attempts to control me!
I’ll rubberneck at my own will, but I most definitely will not invest in regularly-scheduled deliveries of drama. Some drama ensnares us whether we want to be a part of it or not; but, divorce and everything associated with it is the past and no longer where or who I want to be!
Drama can be intriguing, but it also comes at a high price that is usually not worth the cost. One of the lessons about ourselves that we need to learn through divorce is whether or not we are one who needs drama as another form of oxygen, or if we are ready to let what has happened stay on the rack? Those who do need drama to survive will always try to bring along as many others as possible on their destructive voyage. The ride may be exciting and eventful, but not without consequences.
Are you ready to cancel your subscription to divorce drama?
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