You all knew it was coming

A month or so ago, I thought I was going to a dog training seminar for the holiday weekend, so I requested three days off. When things didn’t work out the way I had planned, I didn’t rescind my leave request. I decided, to take my Body Pump instructors advice when heading into a difficult set, and use the time off to “get my mind right”.

For the changes just behind me, and for those just ahead, I needed very much to have my mind right.

I finished getting the upstairs ready, new mattress in, old one to the dump, books and bookcase packed up and stored. The last box of his shit packed up and carried downstairs.

I went to the gym, got a pedicure, went shopping, to the pool, and got a facial. I have been unable to sleep more than 4 hours a night since he told me he was leaving in January. With prescription medication, I could get 5 hours. This weekend, I took a nap.

It’s not over; I’m not completely over what he did, to me, to us.
I am just not sorry anymore.
He chose this. He chose to lie, and cheat and quit.
He listened to my crying, and apologizing and never once owned up to his mistakes. In the end he chose to keep making the same mistakes that have ruined every other major relationship in his life. And, I just can’t care or take care of him for one minute longer.

The box weighed 43lbs. I carried down the stairs, put in the bed of the truck, and carried it into the pack and ship up the street; I wouldn’t let them help me. I needed to do this last thing. I tracked those 43 lbs as they traveled northward. When the notice arrived that it was left on his front porch I deleted the email.

My new tenant moves in next weekend.
I have a goal date for Mojo’s next title.
I start a new work schedule and in a new department, on Tuesday.
I have a first date.

I don’t know where any of these things might lead. I’m not entirely sure I care where some of them lead, but I care that they are steps forward, every good run I’ve ever had started with just a few steps forward.

If that's not getting my mind right, I don't know what is.

The ongoing dialogue

If you look for it, there is an abundance of advice out there in the world for someone who’s recently lost a loved one. I don’t remember intentionally looking for it or reading it, but I could probably recite it if someone asked. Things like, "don’t make any big life decisions for at least the first year after the loss".

In my case, I waited one exactly one year and started making plans to move. I heard that little snippet of advice in the back of my head every time I got closer to my goal of leaving Northern Virginia. I knew ‘a year’ was intended to be an average. I knew I was probably rushing things. I didn’t care. I couldn’t live there anymore. It was too much, being there without him. Driving past the Van Dorn Street exit on 95 made me cry, every time, so did 5 Guys, and 3 buck Chuck from Trader Joe’s. I knew I’d never be able to, or even want to sit in the bleachers at Hayfield High School and watch a football game again. So I ignored the voice and kept on keeping on.

Later, I saw a grief counselor who told me I should write Mark a letter; tell him all the things I was thinking and feeling – just “anything I wanted to say”.
I never did this.

I knew if I started, there’d be no end. There was nothing unfinished between Mark and me. I loved him and he knew it. He loved me and I knew it. There weren’t any harsh words, or ruffled feathers. This should be good news. In the case of the letter writing though, it’s not. How do you write a letter to someone who you told everything to? Even when you don’t want it to, your life keeps happening. You keep meeting people, and if you’re lucky, you make some new friends.
Things keep happening in the world, things you want to talk about. Books and movies keep coming out.

It’s the worst insult. Never having a conversation with him again. Never sitting across from him in the living room, with the fire burning behind me and the dogs sleeping on either of side of him, talking about crazy, brilliant, funny, troubled high school students, or broken animals made well again, or family strife, or exchanging Monica Lewinsky limericks.

A letter? Never mind not knowing where to start, there simply would be no end.

I ran from the ghosts to North Carolina, thinking it would be better, and it was. It is. It still is. I have new people here, a home that he should have seen, a new puppy, and these are things he would have loved.

That wasn’t the worst of it though. The worst of it was when I realized I was in love. In love with a man who makes me think I’ve never been loved before. A man I can’t believe I finally met and a man I would have been proud to take home to Mark.

His opinion was always the only one that mattered. Even when I knew it wouldn’t be a favorable opinion. I took them anyway. Often, their reaction to him was the beginning of the end of it with them. They didn’t know it, but I always did.

It feels petulant to say ‘it’s not fair’. It feels juvenile to scream it.
I want to do both and I probably will.

The dogs won’t tell.

I miss you Mark.