As a kid, I made embroidery floss friendship bracelets, collected jelly bracelets, and bought sailor knot bracelets at the beach.

Friendship bracelets wore down slowly, jelly bracelets grew exponentially, and sailor knot bracelets had to be cut off at the end of the summer.

Marriage is like a bracelet.
Hear me out.

A couple years ago, I didn’t understand what was going on. I was being gaslit daily, lied to, manipulated, betrayed. I was left in the dark of my own marriage.

Which was strange because I’ve always picked up on clues to little situations. It’s like a thing.

I’m usually very good at inferencing.
He used to call me Sherlock.

But now there were daily fights that I didn’t understand. I was burnt out from the pandemic and so much work and parenting.

I told my friend I felt like a friendship bracelet – frayed at all ends, hanging together by just one of those small threads.

Hanging on by a thread was apparently not descriptive enough for me.

I just kept picturing the remnants of a well used friendship bracelet – one accidental tug and it would fall off. “That’s me,” I thought.

How odd that I didn’t realize what my heart was trying to tell me. I mean come on – an image of a friendship bracelet, tattered and hanging?

Now that my marriage is over I understand the image a little better.

Disconnection within a marriage still has sparks of connection. There’s feet finding each other beneath the blankets, a shared laugh, looking into each other’s eyes and just knowing what the other is thinking. There’s make-up sex.

But disconnection in divorce is something different. There are no breaks. There is no friendship bracelet to be re-braided.

I guess our marriage was never a friendship bracelet to begin with. When those fall off it is a symbol of all the hard work, it is meant to be a wish come true. It definitely wasn’t one of those knotted sailer bracelets that you have to cut off at the end of the summer. When you cut those off it’s to signify the warm memories.

So I guess I’m trying to decide. Was our marriage a jelly bracelet collection? When I was a kid we collected them just for fun. I wore wrist full of them. I guess I was naive. Turns out each jelly bracelet color is a different sex act you are willing to perform. Break someone’s jelly bracelet and they have to do that act with you.

So weird that you started snapping someone else’s jelly bracelets.

So to speak.