A Year to the Day

Going back in my diary to be sure of the date, I’m amazed how much shit went down in the months before I heard her tell me she wanted to see other people, and she wanted to separate. I understand now why she texted me some months back, saying it had been a year, asking if I was happy. Not because she was using a different measure of when we’d separated, as jealousy and resentment immediately wanted me to believe, but because she had separated from me in her mind long before she said the words aloud.

After immediately getting drunk to the point of sickness - a classic case of hitting exactly what I headed for - I spent three days in bed, paralyzed, watching the first season of the original Star Trek series on DVD. I couldn’t watch any movies because the context had shifted (did you know “The Wedding Singer” is a tragedy, under the right circumstances?). Bloom had loaned me Star Trek months before. Vaguely disturbing and seemingly endless, the boxed set saved me from having to feel what I was feeling.

I can’t believe that was a year ago.

I didn’t call work, but I did eventually go back. No questions were asked, which is the upside of working for an independent bookstore with no management system. I’d thankfully built up years of trust by that point, so taking a powder and working sporadically when I did show up didn’t lead to getting fired.

Just a year ago, but a different life lived by a different me.

This new life stopped feeling temporary two weeks ago. I took some laundry out of the dryer at Becky’s parents’ house and hung it in the corner. I realized that somewhere along the line of acting as if I was okay, that changing my life wasn’t all that traumatic, that I really was okay, and I no longer felt traumatized. No big epiphany, just a quaint miracle of good feeling.

I’m sure signing the divorce papers won’t be a frolic through the park, but the life waiting for me on the other side will pull me through.

Life is a series of doors; going through them is the thing.