Over in My Heart.

I don't sleep with the plastic mail satchel that carried the slippers for our daughter and the computer cooler for me under my pillow anymore. I used to hold it close to myself because he had touched it when writing my new address on the outside and it was as close as I could get to him. But now – now I can discard it with all the other rubbish. Now I don't need to have pretend that it’s important or that it’s a link to him. Now its just something to be thrown away, it has become meaningless to me.

I confess that I was still begging him to take me back, asking for a second chance. As if I was the one who needed to ask for a second chance. He was the one who cheated with three other women (that he has confessed to), I never broke my vows of marriage to him, no matter what he did to me. I thought that if I begged enough, he would relent and allow me to come back. Back to try again. Back to try and fix things. I would have to change myself to fit around his needs; he would remain as ramrod straight and demanding as ever. And for a time I was actually seriously contemplating it.

But then it all blew away. Like ash from paper when its been burnt, caught in the warm air thermals that slowly waft it up to the sky and then far away: higher and higher until its out of sight, and even the vague memory of its existence will one day fade away. My love for him was burnt away and it was over. With a few words any secret hopes and desires I had of working it out, of fixing it, of making it right fluttered away and instead, in the place of a heart, became a lump of stone. Cold, hard, unyielding, unmoveable. I'm sure that in time, moss will grow over the rock, and soften the edges, but for now, there is nothing there to cushion the jagged edges. The hardness of the stone has taken the place of my heart and it feels heavy in my chest.

In one short conversation, where he blamed me for being too emotional for him to tell me over the phone months earlier that he wanted a divorce, suddenly I felt nothing towards him but contempt, and wanted no part in reconciliation. I felt I could sing with joy that my heart is free. I am no longer emotionally chained to him. My heart is free and I know that its time to move on. Its time to create a new life with my daughter and find happiness for myself. No longer will I have to work around his issues and his needs. Now its just Sweetpea and I. He does not figure in my future at all.

Sometimes this turn of heart that I can have scares me. It was the same scenario with Pondscum. After a week of desperately wanting to reconcile with him, I was able to say, “You just walked away from the best thing that will ever happen to you” and it was true. Within a week, I was able to shut my heart off to him and move on. Within a few years, I had created a successful new life for myself. And now I'm going to do it again. Admittedly it has taken a little longer to shut my heart off this time, but again something inside has snapped and I can no longer allow any love to flow from my heart to his. If anything, I have to say that I hate him for taking away my life. The life that I worked so hard to create when I had nothing to fall back on. I had a good life in Ottawa. And I want it back. I hate him for this whole situation. I want to shout “Welcome to the Era of Me”. Well, me and Sweetpea.


And the tears have almost stopped flowing. Until I see the wedding rings in the jewellery box and then all my hatred dissolve into tears of grief again.