Friday, February 1, 2008

Another Sad Anniversary. Or Maybe Not.

Today marks One Year since my most recent ex-husband walked out on me. Or released me. Or whatever the hell he did. Yes, Mr. Comic Timing, despite my grief over my friend's death, decided it would be best to leave me a day after that death. Not that there's ever necessarily a "good" time to walk out (as far as comfort goes). But man...

Last week, I was going through some old journal entries from back then. I used to get up every morning, begin another day of not eating but chain smoking, sit in the backyard and bawl my eyes out. And then, throughout the day, I'd sit and write him long, long letters, most of which I never sent, in which I see now I just was begging to be re-invited into the world and chaos of pain.

So yeah, he did me a favor by being selfish and putting his own need to drink and watch Law & Order and his kids need to try to destroy me above my request that we take the marriage seriously and work things out. But I'm not sending him a thank you card.

I am thankful that I got through a whole year now, which, while it was happening felt like the slowest, most quicksandy, fucked up year of my life. And now that it's gone it looks like an unbelievable blur in hindsight, twelve months packed with so much (travel alone took me to two countries and all over the US), and much of the so much done in the interest of staying busy so all the grief didn't hit me at once.

Earlier this week I turned in the manuscript for an anthology of grief essays I'm co-editing. Excellent timing.

For everyone who did so much to help get me through, this is my big public thank you.

Woo-hoo. Done. What a fucking year.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

He set you free!!!

Fay Smith said...

tell more about the grief essays? I checked Amazon and don't see anything coming up...

Spike Gillespie said...

it's tentatively due out in the fall and it's called: Stricken: the 5,000 Stages of Grief with essays by 23 writers writing about the various places grief has taken them. i'm really excited about it. i'll keep updates here.