Whose Life Is This?

It was Halloween, and while hundreds of my Facebook friends photo-documented their days at parties and Trunk or Treats, I sat cross-legged on my bedroom floor sifting through ten-plus years of memories and choosing which one gets voted off the island. While I thought this process had occurred weeks prior while cleaning out the major closets, as I boxed up books and combed through tubs long ago forgotten in the attic, other relics from the life that I had lived emerged to rear their mocking heads.

The first relic? Two identical “just because” cards, given at different times. The message? “I know I don’t tell you enough, but I want you to know that I love you.” I was both saddened and angered that a card with that sentiment had to be given twice. I know I don’t tell you often enough…well, why the hell not? Don’t buy another fucking card. Just change it if you see something wrong. Yet another acknowledgment on his part of deficits in our marriage but an unwillingness to do anything about it.

Next stop: Christmas ornaments. My mom traditionally buys personalized and handmade ornaments for me each year to commemorate whatever event happened that year. Guess how many marriage/family/new home ornaments didn’t have a home now? They weren't staying in my box. They weren't going with him. Those cherished small treasures – the ones I saved for a special place on the tree – sat laying on top of the box labeled “trash” looking up at me in bewilderment as if to say, “Um, we had a place last year. What the hell?”

The crushing blow: finding my old journals. I started thumbing through them (I know – bad idea) reading through prayers that I fervently offered up in my early twenties about life and the marriage I would eventually have and taking inventory of my seemingly complicated life then. Then I literally gasped and dropped the book when I reached the last page, seeing for the first time a message scrawled in someone else’s handwriting. Dated November 7, 2004, it simply read, “Know that I will always love you. – D.” I sat there stricken for several minutes taking it in, rewinding the tape to that time in our lives. Oh, it was blissful. We were dating and very much in love, and I knew enough to know that he could likely propose in the next couple of months. The world was bright and shiny then, and he seemed like the answer to all my problems, the panacea to all the pain I had suffered the year before.

It reminded me of one of my favorite poems from Sharon Olds, “I go back to May 1937” where upon seeing an old picture of her divorced parents dating, she wishes she could go back and plead with them not to do it. How could I begin to explain to those two what would transpire over the next ten years? How deeply we would love each other, drift away, then inexplicably hurt one another? Those pictures sit strewn around me bearing witness to feelings of anger, betrayal, regret, and a sense of loss that I have seldom before experienced in my life.

Then there were the pictures and cards from my now-deceased father; he and my mom smile happily at the camera from the back of their boat, not knowing what devastation the cancer would leave in the wake of our lives. And the waves of grief crashed once again over me, wishing that my dad – the fixer of all things – was there to fix this. Next to this stack sat boxes of teaching supplies from the career I left this just three months prior. The blue Keds box overflowed with notes of gratitude and kindness from students over the course of twelve years; I never once threw away a note a student gave me. And while I loved reading through them and revisiting their sweet faces, it again reminded me that nothing about this life resembled what it was. I was moving from Stepford Heaven to urban living, self-employed instead of teaching, and transitioning from Wife to Single Mom. And while on my better days, I welcomed the fresh start and winds of change, those winds blew more like a hurricane rather than a gentle breeze, making days like this difficult to process.

I held my own pity party that day, party of one, looking forward to packing up the last box and starting fresh in a home which had no memories except the ones I created for myself. I wasn't naive to think that grief wouldn't creep it’s way in at times, but I ready to for that beautifully ironic constant in life: change itself.