Whenever I see a beautiful image of the night sky and the Milky Way, I remember that night in Utah with my ex, how we craned our necks up in the stillness of the rental car and took in all of the night sky for almost 30 minutes.
At first, we tried to take some pictures, but our phones would not or could not capture this behemoth of a moment. It was as if this wasn’t a memory we were encouraged to carry forward into our divorce.
So then, we gave up on this futile act and stayed quiet, occasionally uttering things like “This is amazing,” and “I can’t believe this.”
How I had refused to get out of the car in that pitch dark in the middle of the national park. Maybe I already didn’t trust him fully to have my back in ways that mattered to me, although he’s the most effective and calm person I know in an emergency.
If this had happened a few years prior, it would have been a romantic scene where a couple in love could have cuddled under the stars. But we were already on our way out.
On our drive back to the hotel that night, we discussed how inconsequential our lives, our concerns, and our preferences were. How we could make any choice, and that wouldn’t really matter to anyone.
The glorious Milky Way that night humbled me, just like our interracial marriage, which I had gotten into out of my own free will and against the odds my conventional parents had once preached.
