Sabbatical or Separation: Semantics of the Heart

"Come celebrate this union / come holy and unchained..."

Today is my husband’s and my eighth wedding anniversary.

It’s the first one we’re spending apart.

We’ve been living apart since the end of June.

Are we separated, though? Yes and no.

I confess I was surprised when I looked up the dictionary definition of sabbatical and found it to be so exact:

sabbatical | səˈbadək(ə)l | noun a period of paid leave granted to a university teacher or other worker for study or travel, traditionally one year for every seven years worked

When I was a starry-eyed academic, the term sounded somewhat romantic. Ten years into teaching, however, I concluded that a sabbatical was simply a polite term and treatment for burnout.

Which was why, back in March 2019 and again earlier this year, I announced that I was on a sabbatical from my author/writing career. I offered no return dates, but I took the starry-eyed approach—stepping away to recharge my batteries, setting out on new adventures (a.k.a. searching for “novel fodder”), and returning to my laptop brimming with ideas and enthusiasm.

In the reality of both cases, I spent the time grieving.

In 2019, I grieved the separation from my publisher, and how my monthly royalties had plummeted to the point that I couldn’t even cover my monthly student loan payment much less the rest of my living expenses. I picked up the manuscript for what is now All of You in late 2020 with no fanfare—I had taken a sabbatical from social media, too.

Earlier this year, I grieved for what I knew was coming. Craig and I were going to sell our house, and I was going to move back to the northeast coast with my tuxedo cat, Spatz.

(There was no “paid” leave in either case, but that’s a moot observation.)

We told close friends and family that we were going to live apart. Enter a temporary arrangement. Take care of issues that weren’t marital but had adversely affected our marriage nonetheless.

We almost never said “We’re separating” unless it involved a formal matter, such as dealing with a bank.

And here I am now, couching our marital status in romantic terms, perhaps to appease both my inner romantic and inner academic:

We’re on a marriage sabbatical.

I mean, in some ways it does fit the literal definition—we’re unofficially taking a year off before making any formal assessments or major decisions about the future of our marriage.

There’s also something optimistic about calling our separation a sabbatical. As if we’re planning to reunite and reconcile, batteries recharged and burnout subsided. As if we know. As if it’s that easy.

A sabbatical implies adventure. It implies study. It infers that something exciting is happening.

And, just like my self-imposed writing sabbaticals, it provides cover for the grief.

It also masks the fact that we don’t know what will happen in a year, and that sometimes we’re afraid of the not knowing.

I begrudgingly announced Craig’s and my… er… situation… on Facebook after the move because I dreaded that sooner or later people were going to start asking questions and thus decided to issue a pre-emptive Unless you’re family, it’s none of your damn business response.

And yet, I also knew that sooner or later I would write about it. It wasn’t so much that I was saving the narrative so that I could eventually capitalize on it as much as I simply wasn’t ready to get into it. Because there’s a lot to get into.

Like geographical irreconcilable differences, for starters. Namely, my inability to stay in Montana and his inability to leave it.

Second, the need to care for/be accessible to aging parents, which also factored in the geographical issue.

Third, that existential angsty adolescent question that resurfaces in midlife, except with less acne and more joint pain: What do I want to be when I grow up? Or, perhaps, more pointedly, who do I want to be? Followed by Has my life been meaningful? Is this the path I belong on? What mark do I want to leave with the time I have left?

Ten years ago, when I wrote Friends of Mine, I naively thought I’d skipped the angst in my early forties and went straight to declaring the life purpose that would continue well into my fifties. I took cues from Duran Duran, who had recently released their album All You Need is Now in their fifties and seemed to be—I don’t know, getting it. They seemed to be fully plugged into life, knowing who they were and what they wanted to do for the rest of their lives as Duran Duran. Likewise, I knew who I was and what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

I wanted to live life on my terms.

Namely, as a full-time sustainable author.

I was single. I was child-free. I was at my goal body weight. I was a full-time author, and more than sustainable. Hell, I was successful.

And then I fell in love.

And life got even better. I landed an agent and a two-book deal. Craig and I saw Duran Duran at the Hollywood Bowl (pause for shameless plug: with a paid subscription, you will eventually read what happened there) and in Seattle the following year, one month before our wedding. We got married.

When Craig and I fell in love, I changed life on my terms to life on our terms. In the summer of 2015, we had a clear vision of what a Lorello-Lancaster union would look like, feel like, and be. We would be prosperous and prolific authors. We would take road trips. We would do speaking gigs and buy a house with side-by-side offices and live interdependently. We were excited to bring our authentic selves and our full lives into this partnership, figuring the whole would be greater than the sum of its parts.

Yet our terms had been vetoed beginning when our royalty checks decreased each month and my father-in-law lost his driver’s license before the metaphorical ink on the marriage license was dry.

The more we tried to course-correct, the more off course we strayed.

And of course, there’s the thing I never talk about, and the thing we didn’t talk about until we started packing the house:

We dropped the ball.

Craig and I had vowed to perform regular marriage maintenance, and somewhere along the journey, we broke that vow. And as you know, if you stop cleaning and maintaining your house, you wake up one day and finally realize the enormity of the mess. And you’re so overwhelmed that your first instinct is to abandon it.

And sometimes, to repair your house, you do need to temporarily leave it.

A separation is messy. A sabbatical is maintenance.

A separation is about what you’ve lost. A sabbatical is about what you learn.

A separation is about what you’ve left behind. A sabbatical is about what you plan to return to.

So call me starry-eyed, call me naïve, call me in denial. Call Craig and me separated, if you must.

But as long as I’m on sabbatical, I can make this time mean something. I can learn something. I can recharge my batteries, make repairs, and fill the holes. I can also grieve.

Put another way, a marriage sabbatical is a separation on my terms.

I’m observing my anniversary today. I’m remembering the vows we exchanged and the songs we danced to and the best damn cake I’ve ever eaten. I’m also spending the day in solitude, missing my husband, missing the starry-eyed days of our courtship and marriage, and making repairs as best as I can. I’m listening to All You Need is Now. I’m eating cake.

My money’s on us.

Our story continues.