letter to bob

I dreamed of you the other day and you were the you before all the chaos.
You wore a shirt that I bought you as a gift while we were dating, soft, deep purple.
I had forgotten the shirt until I saw your twenty four year old self wearing it.
You smelled of Grey Flannel.
You were in my home and I was the me now, not the eighteen year old me I would have been with you at twenty four.
Your skin was unblemished, your face full, eyes not wrinkled and puffy.
You came to me and asked why it wouldn't work.
We held each other and wept.
I told you that "you broke me inside."
You pointed to my head and asked "in here?", then my heart and asked "or in here?"
I answered both. and I told you that you had died. I explained to you that you had taken your own life in a way and it was over now.
You evaporated then, into thin air, gone, just gone.
I stood there thinking you voice was gone, your handwriting, your laughter, your yell, your arrogance, your cocky walk.
I woke up beathing heavily and with tears on my face and I wept again for you, for me, for your mother. I did not weep for your children.
And I wept with happiness thinking that it was over, I need to let go now.

Future Story

I want to write a story
I'm not sure where to begin.
Do I start with the day I said that I loved you
or the day, years later, you told me the same thing?
Do I go into detail about the chivalry you displayed?
Do I describe having to go to the doctor to fix what you did?
Do I tell about your arrogance and ignorance when you told me there was no God?
Do I talk about your preaching the gospel with relish?
The story would become a book, maybe too much for my mother to read.
She would have to turn away from the pages and gasp
Others would say "No one knows what she lived through."
Or maybe, "There is no way that is all true."
But it is.
I could never make up all the ways you changed me, shaped me into who I am.
There is no fiction like this.
I want to describe it all so I can read myself and then I will know how to feel
about you and life and death and survival.

Troll under the Bridge

Those times you lay on the couch and I on the love seat and our hands would touch and we left them that way because we wanted to.
I thought you'd always be there for the rest of my life.
I didn't know I had more time than you.
The sand in my car there weeks after,
Simpsons every night,
Sundance films,
I'd slap your face even though I knew you'd hit me harder,
It still felt pretty good to slap you.
Jokes always, even not funny ones,
Grey flannel and Polo,
Edisto Island, always Edisto.
Signing that petition like it mattered.
Peaches and boiled peanuts.
I knew you'd never be the same...
Suddenly I allow myself to remember the good things that were overshadowed by your devastation path before.
I forgot so I could survive and now I remember...
Like a troll in my head that only comes out when the town stops trying to crucify him.
That troll is out.
He sits on his bridge and weeps and mumbles
all the things that were good about us.

Definition of Gone

Gone
Wind through the fingers, riding in the car.
Eyelash you wanted to wish on.
Stone you decided to skip.
That one sock.
Book you loaned to the wrong person.
Necklace you dropped in the wave.
On the tip of your tongue.
I am the soul rememberer.
I am all that knows what the picture of the feather means.
I am the survior of you.
I am all the stories now.
Because you are gone.

Drew Eden and how to forgive your attacker

My sweet child has the fifth upper resp. infection this year right now. Her immune system is weak due to paternal drug use prior to conception. It really upsets me hearing her wheeze and cough and be ill all the time. It is really not fair as life too often isn't. I get very upset every time she gets sick because I feel it is not needed.
Which reminds me to insert here that my ex-husband called last week and apologized to me for all that he had done. It has been 4 and a half years since we were together and I have been married one and a half of those to my second husband. I responded badly to the apology.
I knew at some point he would realize that he screwed up. He was explosive and violent when he used drugs. I lived with him for 7 years behaving the way he did. I never knew which end of the spectrum he was on, going up-going down-high-with drawl. And no women who live through this, and God be with the ones that don't, ever speak of the torment they live in. He went through 4 rehabs while we were together and lost 5 jobs. I never really knew him at all. He hid his addict side until absolutely necessary to tell me. He left bruises visible and not, his favorite thing to do when angry with me, because he was convinced I had an affair with anyone that crossed my path, was the choke hold. Never mind the other women he had affairs with. He also adored the spit in the face when she doesn't expect it. I was so afraid of him. The really sad part is he could be wonderful too. He could be so sweet and romantic and just really great. That is the scary thing, it kept me there, waiting for him to notice that I loved him. He never did.
He calls for the first time in 6 months- yes 6 months- he has not even called to check on the kids in that amount of time. So he apologizes and I was very offended. I just ask how do you apologize for all the heartache you put me through? The kids were too young to remember living with him. They only remember their "REAL" Daddy- my second husband- not the biological real but the "REAL" Daddy. To apologize was really upsetting to me. You just can't take that back.
After calming down I called back and I apologized and I told him I was glad that he was a terrible husband/father/man. Because I wouldn't be here now if he'd been good at it, and here is really good. Here is chocolate fudge brownie good. I forgive him if I get to be here.

Inside my Head Today

Invisible weight

so hard to carry

Visible weight

leads to more invisible weight

Quiet solitude with

people all around

Singing in the car

to myself

No phone calls

only bills in the mail

Working

for way too little

Still here in this house

not home anymore

Desire for sleep

although I obtained plenty

Urge to be alone

the want for only myself

Depression

takes me in waves

Comes back

undulating with chemicals

Leaves me gasping for freedom

at times

Leaves me happy inside my head

at times

Must try to remain as normal

as possible

At least as normal

as I ussually am

My definition of normal

is blurred

Maybe it's not me

just the dictionary

Feb 6

Somehow it doesn't seem like a year-a whole year since that day.

I was very nervous because I was singing in the wedding, not because I was getting married.

He worked that day and then came to the church around 2:30 or so and shaved in the church restroom. We wore purple- my favorite color- an eggplant version. The kids wore a icy green color- his favorite. We hired a photographer, it was her first wedding shoot and she was more tore up than anyone there. I made the cake, it was fabulous. Peanut butter fugde cake and icing, them swiss vanilla, then black forrest choclate. We used a big cookie and a glass of milk on top instead of a bride and groom. I made a miniature banner that read "We go together like..." to go over the cookie and milk. We did not decorate the church.

We wrote our own vowes. I vowed to me the cookies to his milk, the cheese to his mac, and the right to his left. We went away for the weekend, the kids stayed with my parents.

I am sure that the physical part of marriage never came with emotion until him. Before it was always an act, a duty, not it is not.

It's funny because about 2 years prior I would have sworn I'd never get married and that I throughly hated men. Everything changed, life became right side up suddenly.