I am so tired. Up since 5:30 am. Closed on my house yesterday. Moved today. Finally got kind of settled on the couch (we don’t all have mattresses yet) and Rollie is fixing up his room, and putting up posters and decided to take a shower before bed.
13-year-old, about to be 14-year-olds (tomorrow) take really. long. showers.
dinner
rollie
scorched earth policy, jerk, prank, tiller and the audition. Requiem, Anybody have a map?
She drives home, listening to a podcast about a divorced woman whose husband cheated on her. Their stories are different and yet the same; She knows what it feels like to be the betrayer and the betrayed. She tries to put herself into their shoes and listening to this story helps. It helps to know that these stories are stories repeated over and over, all over the world, even in Toronto. Yes, Canadians get divorces, too. She feels the hum of the sweet spot of perfect recognition in someone else’s words.
She is cramping and bleeding already from the IUD that the gynecologist inserted just an hour before. Here she is, driving home from the doctor, wondering how she went from being settled and stable and comfortable and then suddenly being thrust into inhabiting the body of a 46-year-old woman pondering sex with boys plucked from the ether of the internet like shopping for shoes on Amazon. She ponders the fact that men in their 30s and 40s don’t show much interest at all. Maybe she is just a hole, a receptacle. Maybe that is all she deserves.
She knows, deep down, that isn’t true at all.
She knows that sex in and of itself is not a bad thing. She doesn’t know if she is emotionally ready for sex with anyone; she knows she aches for human touch and some sign that she can connect with someone again. She knows that a life without touch and intimacy is no life at all. Maybe she can learn to trust someone again.
Maybe some day she will trust her self again.
She turns down a road one street over from her old house, because she doesn’t like to drive by it. She knows he probably doesn’t want her to drive by either. She crosses over her old street, lost in thought, pondering the strange life she is living now, the one that doesn’t even feel real yet. A car passes, the driver raising a hand to say hello. She looks in the rear view window, and sees their old car driving farther and farther away. It is her ex-husband waving, as they both move away from each other, in separate directions, each going to their own homes, and their new lives.
She laughs and laughs at the absurdity of it all, this life, it’s pain and strangeness, and sadness and beauty, and the wonder of possibility tinged with the loss of something that can never be retrieved.
Grief is hard. And all the firsts are hard.
You ruined Halloween forever. First Thanksgiving; Escape to the beach so it won’t seem real. First Christmas. Just fucking grit your teeth and get through it. Next year will be better. Except it’s not better, and your mom is still dead.
My own birthday, when the person who carried me for nine months didn’t call me first that morning for the first time in my life. I’m thankful that I spent my last birthday with you, in the hospital. First spring without you; You loved daffodils and called them jonquils. I planted daffs for you a week after you died, the same day Biden’s election was certified. My kids came out to tell me; it was a sunny November day. A wry smile from me, my face to the sun. It didn’t matter anymore that you called democrats baby killers or told me when Obama was elected that Tiller would end up in a burkha. The daffodils popped up in spring, and you weren’t there to see them. Dad’s first birthday without you. Your anniversary. Rollie’s eighteenth birthday and I couldn’t call you and tell you he was okay now, and your own birthday, our first without you.
And then October 1st. It was always sad for you, the month you lost Charlie, and the month you lost grandma. And the month fell on us, like a pall, with the first stray leaves falling alone. Tiller’s 16th is in two days. You will never ride in a car with her, just the two of you, like I did with Grandma when I drove her to the liquor store, wearing her green and white polka dot leisure suit and her silver sunglasses glinting in the sun. The last month of the first year. I keep replaying the last time we were all together, a Tuesday night, sitting on LeeLee’s couch, just you and me, and something deep in me knew, and I just had to get away, because something inside me was breaking.
I will never forgive or forget that I didn’t see you again until it was time to let you go. Ever. I know some people didn’t get the same comfort of sitting in wait and holding the hand and whispering the important things while the first person that greeted them in this world left it.
And each day seems like a tick on a clock counting down to when it’s been a year and it all becomes real.
Is this thing on?
I haven’t written anything since January. That may be the longest I’ve gone without writing here in 15 years. I guess things are just too heavy, too overwhelming. Too much. Too painful. And they aren’t just my story any more. I am really brimming with the need to write, and yet, I’m unable to cross some imaginary line, one that only exists in my own head. One that protects those I love. One that maybe doesn’t even exist for them, and yet, I continue to protect them from my thoughts that stray over those lines. One that protects people i love who aren’t even my people any more.
Today was one of those heavy divorce days. A milestone day. Painful, heavy, funny. The kind of day that reminds you that you are a ship unmoored. That it’s just you and the open water. That you are alone. That you are the only one on the rudder, on the sails, looking to the horizon.
It was one of those days that you are confronted with age, mortality, what it means to be alone, what it means to ask where will I be? In a week? In a year? At the end?
I could write so much more. But the truth is, I’m scared that once I start, it will pour out in a torrent of pain, guilt, shame, sadness, negativity, anger, pride, indignation, and questioning that will alienate everyone I love. And then again, deep down, I know that i need to find out what’s on the other side of all of those mountains.
I find more and more that music is the only thing that really helps me right now. Because I don’t have to pretend that it’s my mind exactly. They are my theme songs. My sad soundtracks.
Today was this, again. (Always.):
And this:
And always. Back to this.
I guess I’m working back to the words. They are there. I’m just scared to put them out there. I’m just scared. I’m scared to cross the imaginary line. To face what it means. To face what people would think it means.
Postscript: There was a rainbow. A double rainbow. I know what it means. I’m just not ready yet.
