They ended it, and life happens like yesterday. I smile with a blindfold as rings disappear, and last names are returned, and the paper tears in two. It seems no one cares. Yet it touches my skin and turns my insides, making me wonder if I really know what could end all of this.
I'm too afraid to ask the questions out loud. Their stories are different, maybe, but halves began forming long before their it became the unbearable pain. Before it all became too much.
Before she only spoke to him in her thoughts....
"I hate being here at this moment. It's painful and cluttered. Everything is exposed and it all reminds me of what's been going on. It's like we're both trying to escape through the threshold, tripping on each other on our way out to separate worlds. 2:00a.m. and I'm between the sheets, wishing I was in a different bed, living a different story. Then you were asleep and you were somewhere else--a place I couldn't go. I didn't know what to do. So we slept, eventually.
Tonight we fought and I felt so far away--on a floating continent where we can't exist together. I wished myself away, out of the house. It gets so small when we fill it with so many words. Everything happened out of order and all mixed up in necklaces that cannot be undone. So, I went for a drive to be away because I wanted to jump out of my skin and grab onto the ceiling touching my head.
I kept thinking about how you said that we just seem to make each other miserable. What if we are always this? Forever? Will we want it? I try to be the version of me that I want to be. But I feel you never see it. That you don't believe it. And I can't believe it, at least not all the time.
What if this broken version of me is all that's left. My pieces are ugly and mismatched and the mosaic is still broken--more cracks appear everyday. And I'm sitting at the bottom, with the glue, working, placing, getting cut by sharp edges and bleeding over everything. And trying to protect myself from being hurt because it's all too much. Everything is too much."
This is heart breaking to read and I think the fear of a lot of married couples, hope things are ok?
ReplyDeleteAfter 31 years of marriage, I have felt like this a time or two (or three or four). But, we have such a firm commitment to each other and our marriage, that neither of us has never made that step to leave....and we never will. We love each other and after you have day or two to think about the situation, it has worked itself out. Not a perfect way to handle it probably, but for us, it has worked. Hang in there.
ReplyDeleteThanks Kim and Maggy.
ReplyDeleteThis was actually a piece I wrote over a year ago when someone I knew was going through a divorce. It's never an easy thing for anyone involved and it's definitely a complicated mix of so many different emotions...
very strong, honest and emotional post! thank you for sharing and opening up. loved it.
ReplyDeleteReading this brought me back to when I went through my divorce. Your writing is so real and full of emotion....truly a great piece.
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