Re-Writing the Stories

Posted on | August 1, 2011 | 9 Comments

When I was a high school senior, I would walk around thinking “This is the last first day of school as a high school student” or later “this is my last Monday in high school.” It somehow made the time fly by a little faster, breaking it up into intervals of final firsts.  In 2007, in the midst of my madness year, I remember thinking “this is my last month as a law school student,” and “this is my last month of bar prep” and then “this is my last Saturday as a single woman.” And pregnancy was more of the same… always looking forward to the next adventure, always counting down the days remaining in the current one.

Today, as I busied myself with the day to day tasks of work and motherhood, the thought occurred to me that this is the last first day of any month that I will ever be Mrs. Ex-Husband.  And with that thought a cloud of longing, loneliness, and irrepressible sadness fell upon my heart and my day with strangling accuracy.  I will be divorced in eleven days.

And I am indescribably lonely.

I have wonderful friends, I do.  I have a glorious son and parents and siblings who love me dearly.  But nothing compares the the feeling of coming home after a long day and falling into your partner’s embrace.  Nothing quite matches up to the angst emptying feeling of pouring your heart and soul out to someone who swore to love you for better or worse.  Nothing feels quite as right.  Nothing feels quite the same.

I leave work and often find myself staring at the face of my phone, wondering who I should bother today with my stories.  I scroll down the list of contacts and wonder who will not be bored or annoyed or too busy to hear about my day.  Most of the time, I turn it off again and just drive on to get J. I take a deep breath… there is no one there to listen any longer.

When I come home, I cook dinner for J and myself.  I watch J play in the bathtub and then we read books or watch Mickey Mouse on Demand.  Sometimes I blog.  Sometimes I write.  Sometimes I sit and stare blankly at the television and wonder if the only thing that will ever change in my life from here on out is the station I’m forced to watch on television.

It is so lonely.

It is so hard.

I cry more often than I’d like to admit.

I throw up my hands and wonder why this is happening, daily.

I think about what it would be like to just go back, to just start over, to just try again.  I wonder if I can love him enough for the both of us.  I wonder if I can just put up with the hurt and the sadness and the disappointment of my marriage for the sake of having him here, to listen, to hold, to love.

And then I remember that no matter how many times I pucker up, and no matter how much I hope for a prince, a frog will always and only be a frog.  There is no truth in fairy tales.  There are no dwarfs to save me from myself.  There is no fairy godmother.

It is lonely here in the real world.

This is my last first day of the month as a married woman.  This is my last first day of the month believing that my ex-husband could be my one true love.  This is my last day believing in fairy tales.

Maybe it’s time to start re-writing those stories, anyway.

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