Divorce, like other traumatic events, causes time traveling–like me, many divorcing people, I imagine, find themselves vividly living in other time places: years ago, or years from now, when all this will be over, when what is broken will be fixed. Or you feel like two people at once–an old woman who has lost everyone, and a girl whose life is beginning at last.

–Jane Shapiro, “This Is What You Need for a Happy Life,” in Women on Divorce: A Bedside Companion, ed. Penny Kaganoff and Susan Spano