Vacation

Vacation

For the first time in years I am relaxed. I have had a few days off from work and have done (and this IS rare) absolutely nothing but lie around, read, swim, and cook… Usually I must do something all day long with only short breaks to indulge in such activities. Those things are usually mindless things, cleaning, arranging, running errands, and making plans, working on stuff for work. But this week, so far, I have done nothing but sloth. It feels good, good to be dependent on no one, good to know that I am being encouraged to do this by everyone, supported and not guilted.

I have had a lot of guilt in the last six years. You don’t realize how much it envelops your life until it is magically gone. Of course the leaving of that guilt was not magic, in fact it was a hard reality that I would wish on no person. A reality full of disrespect. Oh, I believe he loves me, believe that I love him (yes, still, I love him) but he stopped respecting me and that is a fate worse then stopping loving me.

He knows where I am now, if he cares to remember. This trip was to be with him too, all of us together, have a chance to have a good time and to connect again. There is a strong connection with these people. A surprising one considering my age. I am, though, still the outsider. Maybe not as much as I was, but certainly still a bit on the fence. Not of anyone’s specific doing, it just happens that way – it is a combination of my distance, life experience, personality. It was apparent when they asked me not to go to SF when I so clearly needed to. I think that there was fear I would ruin a vacation, make it all about me. But I never had before and I wouldn’t have then, but I understand the sentiment, why have someone damaged when you are trying to relax. But it did hurt. I needed proximity to people who would not mar me, I needed to do and see different things then I was seeing. I needed to be out of my element so I could have some distance from that thing that damaged me. But I could articulate none of that and I have never told them how much they’re asking me not to come hurt me.

But that is over, past and done. I muddled through without that, found escape and support without a trip. It was probably arbitrary anyway. And things have moved so far past it that it is not even worth mentioning or talking about. Certainly things are good now. Not the best, not back to being ultimately happy, but was I truly ever. Even now I wonder. I spent so many years wondering if I was happy and I still don’t know. Now I am though. Partly because of the things that have happened since the divorce and partly because I am a different person.

This is the truth; I will never be that person again. I fundamentally changed the day he left me at the airport. At first it was for the worst. I have never felt like I did. I wanted to shoot myself, to drive into a truck to tear my eyes out and to wound ever part of me. Pierce my body in places where they couldn’t’ save me. I tried some things, but I was saved too many times by too many people. Why did I become so self-mutilating? I guess I believed the best part of myself was gone. No warning, nothing to tell me that he would do that. Not until I looked back did I even realize what had been happening. She too was a clue, but one I didn’t see. I have changed so much. I am not sure others can really see the difference, not the ones that know me from work or the cursory acquaintances, but the ones that know my inner self know that I am not the person I was. I will forever be damaged, but I hope, and maybe this is naive, that this damage will make me stronger and make that hurt something that cannot occur again. A piece of my soul was ripped out and stolen and nothing will give it back, it is forever missing. Some part of me will always love him. The him that I loved is still there somewhere, perhaps buried forever, but there nonetheless. I see glimpses of it when he writes to me of things he things matter to me, or matter to him. But I also see the new him, the him that I saw only glimpses of when we were together, the him others got full force but was never directed at me. I get those emails now, the ones he used to send to others. They confuse and frighten me and make me wish I wasn’t me and didn’t have to read them, but because of who I am, I do. Someday they will stop hurting, but it may take a while, perhaps seventy is a good age to look forward too.

If it wasn’t for the people I have in my life, I would still be that person who walked all night with two phones in her hand and the computer two feet away, obsessively calling and texting and che4cking email. Calling the police every three hours for word, calling everyone I knew, emailing everyone I knew for some word, any word of how he was doing, where he was, if he was still alive. I lost 20 pounds in two weeks being that person. I never knew that person was inside of me, could take me over. I fear that happening again. God help me it doesn’t.

I started off talking about vacation and rambled on to what happened 6 months ago. 6 months that dominated and ruined what I thought was a life. I am slowly getting it back, that life. This time I hope it is better; that it will treat me more nicely and that I will come out with a better out look a better future.

For now, it is back to napping and reading and swimming and thinking about the possibilities of that life and of who am I am want to be.