Berlin-based Kiwi writer Sarah Quigley on exiting a marriage
How did you get to a point where you could share such private and raw emotions in your book and the column on which it is based?
It has been a really interesting and quite tricky process. I had moved out
of my apartment into a temporary apartment and I had been there a few months and I realised more and more that I wanted to write about the whole experience to make sense of it. I waited until I was far enough out of my marriage time-wise to not feel angry, so I wouldn't be writing out of a sense of grievance or revenge. I think that was a good decision because I was able to put the worst experiences at arm's length and look at them objectively. But actually, one of the main reasons to want to do it as a column was I realised once I had left my marriage how alone I felt and so I wanted to write something that would really connect with readers who might be in a similar situation, just to help them feel less alone and less as if they were the only people in the world going through that.
Is your ex-husband aware that you have been writing about the end of your relationship?
No. We've never been in a position to talk about anything like that and I haven't mentioned it to him, so actually I have no idea. His anger and alcohol problems caused so many problems in our marriage. Your voice shouldn't be silenced through fear of what somebody else is going to think. If he stumbles over the book and wants to talk about it, I would be able to talk about it calmly. Whether he would, I don't know.
How long did it take to work through the grief?
A long time. I was expecting it to be a lengthy process. It wasn't a smooth trajectory; it had a lot of ups and downs and there were quite a few times when I thought I was completely fine and then I would realise I absolutely wasn't. The loneliness in the marriage was quite an issue for me, because as the problems grew I felt more and more alone - but the loneliness after I left the marriage was quite crippling at times. I'm really glad I've been through that, because it taught me a lot; I feel much stronger now. I feel able to cope with anything on my own, which is a great position to reach.
Besides writing about it, what else was helpful?
My friends were enormously helpful, they came through as a raft of support. That was one of the interesting things about feeling so alone. When I started to raise my head and look around, I realised I wasn't alone at all, because I had all these fantastic people around me to help with practical things and emotional things. And I had a lot of people who had read the column writing emails, sharing their problems, which was great because I wanted to connect with people and get people talking about problems. That's one thing I have learned - problems don't go away if you don't talk about them.
