I leave the table, go upstairs and look hard in the mirror. The girl who stares back at me is mocking me. She looks like she’s a hundred years old, and she tells me to get my act together and go sit with Shaindy, hold her hand like she held yours, listen to her talk and talk and talk to get the trauma out of her system, like she also did for you, bring her a face mask and fluffy socks like she silently sent the day after the world found out my fairy tale was burnt in a fire.

I need to go, yet I can’t. The girl in the mirror rolls her eyes at me.

I can’t go because… the greatest tragedy just happened to my best friend… and all I can feel is this sickening taste of jealousy.

I need to go to the shivah.

But I also wanted to sit shivah. I also wanted to sit and mourn the loss of my husband, the husband I thought I had, the dreams I had of the home we’d build together. I wanted people to sit with me, and hug me, and cry with me and listen to me sob as I’d tell them about the dark nights I lay alone in a tiny apartment in a foreign country, not knowing where he was or when he’d come back or what he’d do when he did eventually return.

I wanted to sit shivah, but instead people drew back. My group of friends who were all still single, who couldn’t get enough of me when I was the cute, fun girl, the first in our class to get engaged, were nowhere to be seen. I only heard them whispering.

After two weeks, when I left the house for the first time, people stared from across the street, then quickly looked away.

I went out that first time out with Shaindy actually. She texted me saying she was here for me when I was ready. I told her to come around, and we went outside on a walk, through back alleys. I was terrified of the main roads, of being seen, of being talked about.

I begged her to tell me what people were saying, and she did. She sugarcoated it, sure, made it seem more innocent than it was, but I needed it. I drank up every word. And when she kindly but firmly told me, enough, people have moved on, I accepted it.

We laughed at the absurdness of the whole situation, how I was back at my mother’s house, now 15 stages apart from all my friends, most of whom were still single.

I’m being ridiculous.

Shaindy’s world has just come crashing down, and I can’t stop thinking about my own life.

I find the shivah notice they sent around, plastered on everyone’s WhatsApp statuses and my stomach clenches. I try to ignore it as I switch my comfortable forest- green tichel for my most natural wig. I spend a good ten minutes pulling the baby hairs out, brushing it back, then forward, tucking it behind my ears, then taking some hair out, then tucking it behind again.

It has to look as natural as it can, so people aren’t going to ask me where my husband learns or who my in-laws are.

When Shaindy got engaged, I went with her to her first wig appointment. She was scared to ask me, but her mother was away.

Of course I went. She was there when it was hard for me, I could be there for her, even if that was hard for me.

I didn’t cry at her chuppah, I didn’t cry when I watched her husband look at her with such care, or when her face lit up when he called. I didn’t cry when she told me of the pre-wedding nerves. Her happiness didn’t hurt me.

I’m crying now. Not because of her pain, but because I wish that pain could have been mine.

People are already cautiously suggesting shidduchim to me. And I desperately want to get married so I can be normal again. But the guys suggested all have two kids, are 15 years older than me, and only have one friend listed on their resume.

People tell me that I’m not broken, no, chas veshalom. I’m just a bit… repurposed. So I need to lower my standards, be realistic.

Whereas the only criteria Shaindy will have when remarrying is someone super kind, someone who is emotionally mature enough to handle her trauma.

I have trauma too! I want someone caring! But all I get are sympathetic looks and whispers to the neighbor about whose fault the divorce was.

I pull myself together and put on my coat and leave the house for the familiar four-minute walk to Shaindy’s parents.

I know now how to leave the house with my head held high. It used to hurt to go to the store for my mother. I’d pretend I was buying ingredients for my own supper and the chocolate was for my husband, instead of for me to eat alone in the office at work.

I imagine Shaindy going to Gourmet Glatt and being allowed to slump. No one will judge her for it, on the contrary, they’ll help her stand, put their arm around her, worry about her, tell her she’s brave.

They won’t whisper as she walks past, they won’t wonder whose fault it was, what was wrong with me that I couldn’t last in a marriage for more than five months. They won’t tell anyone that Shaindy should’ve tried harder and that kids these days just don’t know that marriage is hard and that you can’t just take the easy way out.

Instead, they’ll tell her she’s strong and that they’re here for her, and offer to send her breakfast. And I’ll stand watching, crumbling, because I want to be strong, I know now I can be strong, yet no one has ever told me that in the supermarket before.

The front door is open.

I slip into the crowded dining room, and stand at the edge while I wait for a seat. I try to blend in with the cream wall paper, pray she doesn’t see me. I don’t want anyone to see me.

I notice a picture of her husband on the wall, in a gold frame, leaning against the sign with the pasuk to say at the shivah.

I remember the night after I got my get. At four in the morning, the memories still marching across my brain, I opened my laptop and deleted every single photo of my ex-husband and me. Everyone told me to do it as soon as we separated, but I couldn’t. Now, I deleted every single email with his name on it. I couldn’t see what I was doing through the hot tears, the pain that left cuts I didn’t think would ever stop hurting.

He was gone, from my laptop, from my photo albums, even if he didn’t ever leave my brain.

Everyone said freedom felt so good, but to me it felt heavy. Yes, I could fly, but my wings felt broken.

I wonder if Shaindy will ever feel like she could fly again. I wonder if she’ll ever belly laugh, ever do the chesed that brings her so much joy, ever have a memory that isn’t tinged with the savage longing I know so well.

I used to have these questions about myself, all day every day, right after my world ripped into two all those months ago.

I never wanted to have them again, but here I am, having them for Shaindy.

She’ll feel happiness again. I know she will.

I lock eyes with her, trying to tell her that through the noise of everyone’s murmuring.

I know she’ll feel happy again because I did too.

I don’t know how I get out of bed some mornings, smile and even laugh.

I don’t know how she will either. The how doesn’t matter, but she will. I know she will, and I want her to know she will too.

She’ll get out of bed. She’ll run and travel and find joy in the greatest of sunsets and the smallest of raindrops. She’ll discover strength in going to the store with her head held high, and softness in talking about her pain. She’ll go to work. She’ll relax on the couch. She’ll relearn how to do everything she ever did, and in time it will happen without thinking. She’ll put on a sheitel without swallowing the pain. She’ll look at her mother lighting candles without picking at her scars. She’ll go back to work and forget, for a few minutes, that there’s life outside her spreadsheet. She’ll accept the brachos without screaming inside. She’ll daven for rebuilding what she doesn’t have, and learn to say thank you again for what she does.

And then I see her eyes soften, falter slightly. I can tell that the dazed look of not really registering what is happening passes, that she hears what I’m trying to tell her.

I walk across the room and hug her.

There’s no jealousy.

Just pain embracing pain, strength comforting strength, a friend, trying her best to be with her friend, even if she doesn’t know how.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 981)