Bittersweet aftertaste

Everywhere I look, pieces of our life are scattered about. The life that is now over - the 12+ years of being together. My hiking boots in the closet, freshly bought for adventures that I won't undertake. I look at them and I cry. The pictures in the frames on the shelves - I can't imagine how to divide them. The occasional hug or touch that now means so much less, and in a different dimension of something we both haven't grasped yet. The glances and the silent understanding of the death of what was there, but perhaps no beginning of what else it could be, and therefore, pain. It hurts me to see my husband in pain, it hurts me to feel myself in pain. It's bittersweet. The crinkly pieces of love are spread on the floor, as a torn love letter.  Some pieces are reminding me of happy times, some - of conflicts and anger and frustration. We both walk over them, bustling about our daily lives as parents, but we can't ignore the crunch of paper beneath our feet. Every once in a while we stop and look down, we pick them up, wondering - can we glue them back together? Is there a reason why we tore them apart - how could they become so little and insignificant - out of something so big and overwhelming that started it all? 

We ran into each other by chance - is this the price we must pay? Is there such a thing as careful planning and evaluation of someone you want to be close with in your life? Can love be planned, measured, rationed, executed? Or is this simply part of life, and no reason can be a reason for what is happening, except that it simply is? Every time I turn another year over, I think I know what I'm doing - until I know I have no idea. And nobody does. We all stumble through, supporting each other, or letting each other fall, or picking ourselves up - wondering - is this what life is about? How can two opposite feelings live together in one body - smiling through tears, being relieved though anger, being in love with someone you hate, bleeding and healing at the same time? I'm all of all of the above, and more. I want to dance, but the second I stand up, I fall down from grief. I want to cry, but the second my tears start rolling, I laugh. I separate myself from routine, only to fall into depression from not feeling useful, and rushing back into it, just to do something, anything - laundry, dishes, cleaning, parenting, chores. To keep the structure alive, though I can see the foundation of it eroding, and it slowly falling apart. 

I look at the years in my hand - they're fragile - I want to blow them off and watch them fly into the air. They will always be part of me, part of the fabric that makes family - solid yet ethereal. I want to blow them off, to make a wish - remembering being a little girl - when I caught a  fallen feather from a bird. I'd squint at it and think for a long time, making sure whatever I wish would be important - because if it was granted, it better be life changing. Like all kids having any toy they ever wanted, or all kittens having a home. Those were my wishes then, which ones would be my wishes now? To love. To have enough love to embrace everyone around me, to love and to give without end, without bottom. I blow and enter a snowfall - those soft flakes falling without sound, covering and burying me underneath. No matter what I do, I know they will melt. When I catch one and watch its intricate pattern, it melts in the matter of seconds - like that memory of a movie we've seen together and laughed, and held out hands for the first time, or that walk under the stars in the night, talking aimlessly about nothing in particular, or that dinner half-eaten at a restaurant and the spoon held in my hand, forgotten, from gazing into each other's eyes. It all melts, and I try to freeze the pieces, to preserve as much as I can. I catch one flake with my tongue. The bittersweet aftertaste spreads in my mouth.

It's over. But the taste still lingers. I want to get rid of it, to replace it with something - anything. I want to rush into something new to block it out - but I know I won't fix anything. I have to let it be, to taste it, to let it dissolve in its own time. To let the bitterness take its course, to let the sweetness spoil the bitterness. To savor both. To look back and to know - I loved, I lived, and I can love again. 

Photo by Kennedy Garrett.