washwords

I’m having the best day I have so far this week, cleaning up, straightening out. Onward and Upward. Other Fish in the Sea. Wasn’t meant to be. I’m Doing the Right Thing.

I’m putting away new shoes, folding fresh towels to celebrate clean starts, living with just me. And then I get to the sweatshirt.

The sweatshirt. Grey and red, with its three letters, latin writing. It’s two, maybe three sizes too big for me. He had it, I imagine, since he started grad school, since shortly after his son was born, nearly 10 years before I met him. We joked, him laughing, saying “Is that really even mine now? I think it belongs to you.”

And when we did the final analysis, the “logistics” of our separation, he told me, “You should just keep it.” I nodded, through blurry swollen eyes.

I wore it for the first time on our wondrous weeklong getaway, just weeks after meeting him He said “I know, I know, its way too soon for a trip, way too soon especially for a WEDDING trip for my friends. But if you’re not there I’m just going to be missing you and thinking about you the whole time.” I bought my ticket before I hung up the phone.

I had sweatshirts of my own on that trip but chose to wear his. I’m wearing it in that picture by the waterfall, with my fisherman hat and sparkling eyes. Loving that we took that plunge to do the crazy trip, loving that we made couple friends, had journeys, never ran out of excitement or energy or conversation. Loved that I was falling into loving him.

His eyes, arms wrapped tight around me, sparkle back. In his own trademark fleece. The one he asked me and every sales clerk within listening distance of the outlet malls if he could wear to his new job. The new job I got him. He deserved it and more. But I made it happen. And four days before he started there, we were over.

I press the sweatshirt to me, smelling his laundry soap on it, feeling for a moment that i could put it on, have him holding me again. On that twinkling bridge by the water fall when our eyes sparkled and possibility draped over branches.

Then I fold it up and put it on my second highest closet shelf, on top of two other grey and burgundy sweatshirts.

There’s the gray one with thin burgundy stripes, just my size though I’d wished it were bigger, the one I can still picture my ex-husband wearing in college, with sweatpants or jeans, late in the newspaper office, or years later on our bed, wrapped in his brown blanket.

And the burgundy one from my MREB.* Well till now. MREB brought the sweatshirt for me to have at his mom’s knowing I’d be cold and then forgot was his, packing it in a bag of socks and hairdryers and books of mine he returned some months later.

I climb the stepladder, fold it gently once more, smooth it down. Then climb down, close the door and breathe. I am not cold, for a change.



*most recent ex-boyfriend

*your hand on her thigh
*in another year I might be ready to start thinking about it
* live for the moment
* no, don’t come over
* no, you can’t help
* no, I can’t figure that out yet
* keen.
* your hand on her thigh
* your arms around her
*the not calling
* the things are hard for ME
* the “luck” with which you found your job.
* the exclusion
* the different places – your casualness, my drama
* the way you let me love your little boy, take care of him
* the way you just don’t love me

for girls (apologies to Christina Aguilera or whoever sings that song). Besides maybe it feels like this for boys too. And of course, really I can only approximate what it felt like as a girl, so really it’s as a woman that I can write about best. But I digress.

What does it feel like?

No, like I’ve said before, not a green-eyed monster. (See “Valentines’ Day” ). It’s more like the Charlie Brown raincloud hovering overhead, moving when you move, pausing when you pause, that won’t be fooled no matter how you try to sidestep. But it’s darker, greyer, more omnipresent. And closer overhead. And thick, oppressive – it seeps into the ground, enveloping you inside. Will not shake you free. It’s panic. Fear. And complete empty but chaotic opaque space. It sucks time so that it feels like “while most people have a day, you have two or three hours” (Virgina Heffernan, “A Delicious Placebo” in Unholy Ghost, 2002, Nell Casey, ed.) Tornado-like it swirls sucking energy from you and those around you, especially the ones you love. It pushes you down. It shades everything blue-grey-black so that all the colors are distorted, and even the bright times and places look like hurtful ones. It makes smooth edges jagged and dangerous. It makes jagged edges life-threatening. It’s more than hopeless. You forget hope exists. It’s worse than bleak- the emptiness isn’t passive – it jabs and twists.

And when it lifts, which you know it does and will though you can’t ever seem to remember while enveloped, it’s just as sudden, just as clear. You’re stronger, more hopeful, more lifted than the best of them. And can’t see the swirling twirling mess of dirt and tears and broken glass below, until you fall again. But the others can.