They feel life is for the taking, and that everyone deserves happiness no matter what the cost. I must remember these tricks if I ever decide to have my soul surgically removed.
Surprises, I feel now, are primarily a form of violence.
Bushwhacked, I examine my hands. Same hands. Rings still there but no longer valid.
I mentally bless and exonerate anyone who has kicked a chair out from beneath her or swallowed opium in large chunks. My mind has met their environment, here in the void. I understand perfectly.
When you moved, I felt squeezed with a wild infatuation and protectiveness. We are one. Nothing, not even death, can change that.
I played possum. I did this, as the possum does, out of fear.
I travel back in time, falling back into what I know for certain, the historical data I cling to in order to not go mad, not assume I made a suicidal and well-informed error in marrying this man.
I feel angry but not homocidal; this may be unlooked-for progress.
My mind floats like ash. I blame myself most cruelly.
God is great and God is good,” Lisa says. “But where are the Apache attack helicopters when you need them?
I feel incendiary, a wildfire. My spirit licks at the gates of a very elaborate, customized, and distracting emotional Hades.
The whole world seems tilted, my inner ear displaced by a hole where my spouse used to be.
I want to own this transition, not to simply swallow the shame of it entire. I will push for every little irony.
The marriage is over; counseling is the eulogy. The relationship autopsy is the wake.
Much like trains in India, grief is a circular, irrational process with no discernible rhythm or timetable. Here it comes, there it goes.
This people know where their husbands are. I would like to vomit. I would like to vomit my soul out.
It would be sad and wrong in so many ways to self-combust at this time.
Flannel shirts should be outlawed for ex husbands; I realize this now. Flannel shirts are to women what crotchless panties are to men.
I saw my reflection in their eyes, but not the men themselves, not clearly. This preserved the idea that all intelligent and even vaguely attractive men were essentially good. Delusion detest focus and romance provides the veil.
This is much easier than when N left. Our son is unable to grasp and simultaneously turn doorknobs yet. If only this trick could be unlearned by men over thirty, many more families would celebrate Christmas together.