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

From the windows of the car, the slush and rain reflects gray back to me, to the world and back again. I have behaved so poorly. Outrageously, even my therapist agrees. “Why are feelings so important?” she asks me. What else is, I wonder.

I try to stamp down, shut out the pervasive green sea-monster that rises and grows inside me. I try to see it for what it is, a monster, a demon, an addiction – like heroin, she says, that I must resist, that I must quit cold turkey. But something about it is soft and soothing, Muppet-like and reminiscent of girlhood rainy days warmed by books and cozy lights.

So maybe I shouldn’t think of it as a green monster, this omnipotent jealosy, this seething rage. I picture thunderstorms, hurricane me as a colleague once called me after a short rage-filled elevator ride with me. I picture demons, heroin, murderers, poison, venom, steely jagged hurts.

I don’t do it to punish myself. That’s not where the weakness lies. I do it in the hopes of jolting, shaking myself into submission with the horror that these are things my heart contains.

I do it so I can stop. Stop lashing out at the ones I love. Stop judging, presuming the worse, filling with hate and with fear. Stop sabotaging, willfully breaking and twisting the most important and precious of bonds. I do it to stop hurting, hating, spinning, twisting, aching. I do it to stop, to turn off the engines, shut off the motor, curtail spinning wheels, retract all moving parts back into their shell.

I picture the horrors of my heart over and over, in more fantastic and terrifying ways all just to stop moving, clear a path, and try to find the still, calm, deeper me. I do it because I am curious — behind all this swirling, spinning fury, what will I find? I’m afraid to say it outloud but I’m hopeful there’s a stiller stronger loving me in there, a girl I’m sure I once knew.

Dear _____,
Today I walked through a misty silver forest, knee deep in orange and brown fallen leaves, past stone walls, tinkling sheep, laughing baking villagers,

and I thought:

You should be here.

and I laughed over vino and gateau basque in espanol/anglais/francais, and I was golden, delighting people, the way I once did you, walking over velvet lush rolling hills, the softest place I’ve ever seen.

I missed you.
and you
missed me.