Category: Moving on

One Year Later

One Year Later

by queenofwrecks ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

I don’t love him like I loved Michael. Truth be told, I don’t love him at all. I’m not entirely sure I’ll ever allow myself the reckless abandon that love requires. That’s what it is, right? Reckless abandon. It’s putting your faith in someone, believing that they could be ‘it’, putting their needs ahead of your own and trusting that they will keep your heart as safe as you would keep theirs. I don’t think I can do that again.

And, anyway, what if this is it? This: my quiet life. I mother. I work. I write. I cook. I laugh with friends. I cuddle my new guy, who I don’t love but who gets me through the lonely weekends without Michael. This is it. I’m ok with that. I embrace this life, in all its “itness”. I’m independent and strong and don’t cry as much as I used to, even when we were together.

I don’t think of Michael as often these days. With a year between us, I’ve gained enough perspective to be proud of him.

“Proud of Michael, the lying liarface who cheated on his wife and on you for three years?” You might ask.

It’s a fair question.

I’m proud of him for sticking with it. I’m proud of him for not contacting me. Regardless of the lies, I believe that cutting me off completely was almost as hard for him as it was on me. It was a task made easier only because he had so much more to lose. Whereas I lost nearly everything when he walked away.

I wish I could end this update with one of those cathartic, a-ha! moments, but catharsis is yet to come. If ever.

For now, my heart is safe and my cheeks are dry. Our happy memories are secured in dreams that don’t visit me often but don’t terrify me when they do.

We are driving north with his hand tucked between my legs. I am hugging his right arm and kissing his shoulder. The wind from his cracked window creates an imbalance in the car, a thump, thump, thump, that keeps me anchored in reality. I feel light in his love and alive in the imbalance of it.

Resurrection

Resurrection

by queenofwrecks ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

On Friday I will attend a Seder. I will bring an Israeli salad, drink kosher red wine and read from the Haggadah as it is passed around the table among friends. I will be with peers, although I am not Jewish.

“You are a Jew at heart,” a friend said when I told him that I’m emptying my house and starting over, filling it with things I love, things not from the past, things my ex-lover never touched, things without memory.

I do not believe in God and I say this. But I do believe in Spring. I do believe in Resurrection. I do believe in rebirth and emerging nearer to our truer selves.

In two weeks I will meet someone new. He might someday push my curly hair from my face and tell me that I am a dream. I believe in dreams. I believe that I was once someone’s dream.

“Are you real?” Michael asked me on a Wednesday, his face so near to mine that I could feel every hot vowel, see every fleck of gold in his bourbon-colored eyes. “I mean it…are you REAL? Because I feel like I dreamt you. You are my impossible dream. How are you possible? You are everything. Really, you are everything.” With my right hand cradling his face and his legs beneath mine, we felt like everything.

Allowing someone else the power to define you is dangerous: when, three years later, my lover declared that I was nothing, I became nothing.

I know that I should rewrite my self-description, but I can’t. There are only a few words for ’empty’ and none are interesting. I am further drained by my efforts, so, for now, I am satisfied by my emptiness. I am forgotten, and bland, and that blank spot on the shelf. Something was there once, but I don’t care to remember it.

I do remember happiness, though; we were in my kitchen. The light was perfect and my iPod played the old tunes, reminiscent of childhood and the security of being able to take love for granted. The familiar smell of the lemon chicken and the way he turned the potatoes made my head fuzzy and warm. He was at the stove like he belonged there and I was hovering: post-coital and blissful and floating. A fluttery feeling started low in my stomach and danced to my mouth where it announced itself in confident, vibrant love. I thought he was it. I thought we were it. I thought I could trust that moment and the many moments before and after.

That moment was something. Wasn’t it? Or must I denounce that memory with all of the rest?

This Friday I will attend a Seder. I will bring an Israeli salad and pass the Haggadah among my peers. I will think of an adjective for myself; I will think of a dozen ways I want to be. I will fill my foundation, walls and floors with things that have never been touched, feelings not from my past, people who I could love, and sketches of who I might still become.

I will build from that.