So I started packing. It made it real.
I went through a drawer in my room and started packing up my loose, random to-do lists, shopping lists, pros/cons lists about my marriage, and eventually unburied a therapeutic (unsent) letter I'd written to my starter husband last year. By the third page (single spaced, too, although it was written by me, so it's not such a feat), I was crying.
It was like watching your little sister or your own small, confused child in sheer agony and not being able to do anything about it, but loving her more for having witnessed her survive it. Trying to earnestly and dutifully to right a situation that would later do itself in, trying to write her way out of absolute devastation, where the pain is a jungle and writing is the only vehicle out.
And just like if it were my own little girl or little sister, I sat and cried, because I so wanted to go back nine months and give my old self a hug. To tell her that if she had any idea how good it was going to get, oh my breaking heart, that she would never believe me. But if she only knew, she'd have been OK. She'd have never gotten in the bathtub fully dressed and sobbed in the running water.
I'd love to go back and tell me that cheeseburgers and Pride & Prejudice and reruns of Friends would carry me through the first few weeks he was gone. How I would survive--nay, thrive--with the help of good music, great food, and the kind of friends I didn't believe existed before then. Of course, if I knew that back then, I would not have been able to taste that kind of cruelty, or wake up with my first coherent thought being "Dear God, I am in hell," and gain the perspective I have now.
I folded the pain-chronicles in half and stashed them in the pages of a journal. I don't ever want to forget that I felt like that.
You are a fantastic writer. I could elaborate in the context of this particular post, but I don't think I can effectively convey what I want to tell you. So I'll just leave it at that: Fantastic.
ReplyDeleteThis post made me want to hug you too. For all that you went through, and for all the happiness you have now.
ReplyDeleteEverytime I read one of your posts I marvel at how beautifully you use words.
I always like to think of my future self, having made it through the darkest times. She doesn't tell me how I made it through, but just knowing that she did is enough. Your future self continues to make it through, even at this of all the darkest times. Try to feel her holding onto you and loving you through off it.
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