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More scars, inside this time.


I was supposed to get married yesterday.  I had the dress, the caterers, the guest list – most importantly I had the man, whom I loved with a certainty I’d long thought impossible.

But I didn’t.  Get married, or have the man, as it turned out.  I was cut brutally loose, with little warning, and spent the summer floundering and desperately trying to weave together some semblance of a life for myself from the shreds of who I was before things imploded.

The good news: I’m getting there.  I’m in therapy, which is helping me strengthen my emotional core; I’m dating new people, which is a constant reminder that I’m not totally worthless to every male member of the human race; I’m actively looking for a full-time job (and the health insurance that comes along with it); and I’m reconnecting with my amazing, wonderful girlfriends, a gang of whom spent the weekend with me at a vacation cabin in Healdsburg, distracting me from my sorrows with booze and laughter and genuine, trustworthy love.

The bad news: I’m still really sad a lot of the time.  Even though the life I’ve lost seems far away now, almost as if it were a dream and this new single life is reality (which it is, but the situation felt reversed a couple of months ago), it still hurts to remember it.  And I’m reminded all the time.  I see clothes he’d want to try on and go to restaurants he’d want to make regular spots and lie in patches of sun he’d complain were too hot but not want to move because it’d mean being farther from me.  I do things we once did together, and try to imagine doing things we loved, like travel, that I’m afraid would break me without him.  I miss him all the time, even when I’m angry with him for what he’s done or feeling withdrawn from who he is now, someone I’m not sure I even know.

One thing I will say: I’m stronger than I was.  And I think that will be true for the future, always.  My heart is so covered in scar tissue that it’s gone inflexible and toughened – hopefully I can keep it from getting too hard, but in the meantime it’s good to know it can’t be broken again in this current state.  Even when I stand on my parents’ deck and look out at the tree we planned to marry under, or give friends a tour of the barn we were going to decorate for the reception, or buy a special bottle of wine and feel a pang at the realization that we won’t be sharing it on our wedding night.

Sure, it twists and turns and sears, and maybe it even rips in places where the tissue hasn’t fully scarred over, but it doesn’t break over and over again like it did all summer.  And for that, I’m grateful.
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Comments

Miss Positive said…
I just finished reading your book (totally absorbing and relate-able, by the way) and now I read about what's happened to the love you once wrote about with so much joy.

I have been where you are. I get it. I am still there at the moment. And I really, really admire how you can be so honest and real in such an open, exposed space.

Thank you for sharing.
1 December 2013 at 21:53
Anne said…
Thank you so much for your kind words, MP. I'm really pleased you enjoyed the book, but I'm sorry to hear you share my emotional experience... I wouldn't wish it on anyone. But I will say this: it gets better, if only because it must. Life moves on and so will we, eventually (and painfully).
All best xx
2 December 2013 at 15:07
Anonymous said…
When this happened to me, the best way I could describe it was that everything felt dimmer. About a year and a half on, the dim days are fewer.

I hope the same for you.
11 February 2014 at 03:39
Anne said…
Thank you, Anon. I hope so too!
xx
11 February 2014 at 12:17
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