It’s often like having a sore toe. It throbs just enough to remind you that you stubbed it on the couch yesterday, only this throbbing, it sometimes disappears only to come back like you jammed it in the foot of the couch again today. The death of a marriage. The grief that rises and falls. The lost dream of a happily ever after with you, the 17-year-old kid at the bowling alley wearing the faded Guess jeans. There will never be anything else like a marriage where kids come from it, one where you build a family together.
What do you do with the crowding in your mind? The constant reminder of the one decision that got you here today. I want to find an emergency exit and flee from it every single day. The inability to find peace within me is excruciating. It’s disturbing. It’s impairing. It’s like I’m right back to the place when we were struggling to figure it out. I have no better answers now than I did then. I moved on quickly. I fell in love again. I discovered so much more about myself and also that I still don’t know exactly how I got here. Many days it’s surreal. As if I am living someone else’s life, identifying with only a small fraction of the woman I once was.
The dreams. They never cease. Last night you came to me with a baby. You told me she was ours. I was unaware of ever giving birth to her. You named her Rachel. I felt sick to my stomach that I had left her. I asked if I could give her a middle name. The name escapes me now but somehow I felt that was my way of claiming her as mine. The pit in my stomach leads me down the rabbit hole, searching for meaning.
It was a Saturday night, mid-July. We sat casually on the boat dock where we kept “A Beautiful Mess”. Our dream of owning a boat had become a part of our family’s summer leisure. The kids went ahead to the hotel while we cleaned up for the day. We dangled our sun-kissed legs from the front of the boat, enjoying a beer. Music from nearby boaters was the norm but on this particular night we were drawn into a familiar, nostalgic song playing, Sister Golden Hair, jokingly trying to remember who sang it. We guessed wrong several times laughing at ourselves for not knowing. After all, it was such a classic. Its lyrics, sweet yet sad. Full of hope and young love. We always had this energy between us, doing absolutely nothing and finding the fun in it. It was a tiny break from the heaviness of the dark cloud that was over us. It was after all 2016. We were four years in.
Less than two years later I sat in my car in the driveway, it was a frigid and dark January night, snowing like crazy. The tears poured out like they often did before getting out of the car to enter an empty house. No kids this week. I couldn’t quite do it. Paralyzed with grief. With the most horrific sorry and regret. Feeling as empty and cold as the night. Torturing myself by reading and re-reading the text you sent me earlier today. “It’s final. Thank you for the good years.”
Sister Golden Hair played deafeningly loud on my car stereo.
“Will you meet me in the middle? Will you meet me in the end? Will you love me just a little, just enough to show you care? Well, I tried to fake it, I don’t mind sayin’, I just can’t make it.”
