I’m stealing a few quiet moments this morning. There’s a steady drip of rain on the windowsill and the sunrise turns the sky to a milky gray, clouds heavy over the tops of the trees in the ravine. The leaves are slowly starting shift from verdant green to hues of mustard. My heart feels simultaneously heavy and full.
I will never recover from his betrayal.
I will never understand her silence.
I will wake each morning and hold this heart of mine, so full of abundance and hope. I will hold it, because I am the one who holds it most carefully. I’ll meet new love in all of its forms with gratitude. I will quell the terror I feel as I move closer and closer to someone new. This fear will be tempered with careful, measured steps instead of the headlong plunge into love that I have grown used to.
The summer was the easy part, as I lived in the limbo of the comfort of my childhood home. Now, as I start my life here in this tiny and cozy apartment, the familiar routines of school activities, rehearsals, birthdays and Hallmark holidays are a fresh new wound. Each moment is so completely different than it was last year. Each moment has me standing on the outside, watching my family carry on without me. Each moment will never be the same as it was.
There are parts of this story that you haven’t read. There are truths that I haven’t found the courage to tell. They are raw, and blistered, and they may never completely heal. There are apologies and confessions that I will never hear. There’s a scab on these wounds that I’ve built out of believing the good parts of the man I loved made me my beautiful son.
My own child-voice moves her mouth to my ear and tells me what she wants me to do:
“You should allow yourself to fall in love. You should enjoy the way your body feels with someone who is safe, and sincere. You should walk this path and see where it leads, because there is wonder here.”
She says:
“You should do all of this, but you should also make space to love yourself. In quiet moments listening to the rain and the clicking of your fingers across the keyboard. With nights sprawled across the whole bed by yourself. Create that silent space where loneliness feels like a kind of companionship and you hear with utter certainty everything your heart desires.”
And then she says this:
“You must try to love those who have hurt you. It will make soft again those pieces of your heart that have built a barrier against the love you deserve.”
I love you. I’m learning to love you. I will love again, and again, and again.