Just because I needed to write....

3-29-08

The blank page in front of me stares in ridicule of what I prepare to write, what I dare to think. This weekend haunts my every step, decisions made without sincerity. How do you feel secure in a decision that changes not only your life but the next hundred years of other peoples, when what you decide will shape who someone else becomes. When your fear fills a room and you stand in the corner, weeping, shaking- it is hard to decipher right from wrong, emotion from wisdom, noise from silence. Everything blends together. I can’t fathom the next few weeks, will it hurt this bad? Will the pain fade into acceptance? For the next fifty years will I regret what I have done? I lay in bed at night while the silence at the foot of the bed screams over me, while the covers fail to shift next to me, while the feedings are all mine and not shared, while the alarm fails to sound. I lay there in my bed at night and wish I had stayed. This is not my home anymore- it hasn’t been for years and I miss the smell of my candles, the responsibility of my own place, I miss coming and going and singing loudly and the memories of my newborn baby coming home for the first time. The apartment was small, but it was mine- it was my home, the first place we had together, my child’s first home. Her nursery is now empty and she sleeps in my room. Her toys scattered in boxes thrown together. I left the cherished pictures so the rooms would not be void her. If I were the one left, I would hate me for leaving, I would hate me for taking my truest love. I imagine him coming home to a quite place, no sign other than pictures of his baby girl, no dinner in the fridge, no one sleeping in bed. I imagine him walking in to everything missing, and I cry for him. I cry because I wanted a family together, I wanted holidays and birthday parties, I wanted Saturday breakfast in beds to last forever, I wanted summer baseball games and movies and thunderstorms. I wanted it all. I don’t know how I got here. I don’t know where the love went, was it left behind on accident in a town between here and nowhere? Was it given away by accident to a stranger in the store? Was it slowly rationed out and now we owe a debt? Was it ours forgotten and left untended? Did we hide it in boxes and bags and closets of unused items? I know I felt it. I know I once owned it.

As I go through my boxes of shoes mixed with sweaters mixed with dishes, I find a life I forgot I was living. I find pieces of the love I though was missing. I have found memories in snapshots I forgot I had and I find a moment I will never relive, never get back and a love that is forever changed. I hate myself for that.