It all started innocently enough. An email arrived in my in-box. From a friend. Who I thought I had lost in the divorce. Not that there was a real division of the friends we shared like there was the dishes and the flatware and the pots and pans, with me taking those that I brought into the relationship and David taking the ones we made after we were together. No, nothing like that.
However, in the aftermath, and wow, it's been quite the aftermath for me even if it hasn't been for David, it just seems to have happened that some friends went into his corner and some went into mine. Again, not that we really have corners. Or maybe we do? I'm not even in California anymore and we all know it has taken me over a year to even be brave enough to return to that state without having a massive anxiety attack. The State. As if David was some omnipresent demi-god who knew the moment I had tippy-toed across the border.
Still, I did sneak back into Santa Cruz the last time I went. I told no one I was coming. I refused to associate with anyone who might speak his name while I was there. I was careful and was so very good at playing the "don't ask, don't tell" game that I certainly would have made a very fine Marine, especially given me predilection for lovely women.
So there's the email. All shiny in my in-box. Begging to be opened. To be read. It was almost glittery and singing siren songs, it wanted me to open and read it just that much. It's the siren songs and glitter that get me every.single.time.
It was a lovely email. Full of kindness and warmth and genuine love. With a link. To a blog. All very innocent enough, honestly.
The blog? Beautiful. About all the other parts of her life that are not her main source of income. The bits and pieces add up to make her such a beautiful and talented and wonderful woman. A life that is truly well loved and well lived.
And then, well, there he was. David. Right there. Almost like a shiny diamond waiting to be discovered. Instead it was more like a portent of the storm that was about to swirl and rage.
People, I am disappointed and embarrassed and all kinds of other unmentionables (because they involve self-hate and I am about self-love so I'm trying my best to really overcome these emotions!) to admit here, publicly, that I was overcome with a horrible anxiety.
I felt it start in my heart and radiate, like a nuclear bomb, out through all that is me. There was no stopping the rush, it blew right through me like 10,000 pounds of dynamite. And my own shock and amazement that after all this time, nearly two years later, with thousands of dollars of therapy behind me, with a life that is very well lived and well loved in another state, with adventures and reclamations of me, that this brush, this mere brush with him that wasn't even REAL, but just imagined by words on a screen, could have such a momentous and tortuous effect?
Of course I ended up in the shared bathroom redepositing my lunch into the oh so not clean toilets. Gah.
I am truly sick (yes sick) and tired of this reaction. I don't want to care anymore. I just do not. He does not care one fucking cat's lick about me. David has moved on. Way on. Way, way, way far beyond on. So why on this beautiful green earth should I care about him?
I know that memory is cellular. That our collective memories never just fade into a lovely twilight. The love, the emotion, the very taste of him is deeply ingrained in my core being, far beyond the surface, it rests comfortably in my soul. I also know that I am far more sensitive than most. I realize that for ten years, he was my everything. Whether David realized it or not, he truly was the love of my life. I loved him truly, madly, deeply and completely.
What hurts most now is to try so very hard to not love David at all.
