Unparalyzed

I wish that he would love me. Like twenty hours on the Greyhound bus from Columbia, South Carolina to New York City with headphones playing neo-soul on the discman and a duffle bag for a weekend rendezvous kind of love; unplanned bed and breakfast check-ins; day trips to Amish Country in Lancaster, Pennsylvania; long excursions to vineyards; horse-drawn carriages in Central Park; In love. Long, moonlit walks in Times Square; summertime picnics on the lawn; ballets, concerts; Broadway; museums; parties; John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” playing on lazy Sunday afternoons; spending nights together in the car with the seats reclined; phone conversations until sunrise; hand-written poetry; With love. Birthday dinners at the Water Club; sneaking into dorm rooms after curfew; graduations; first jobs; first apartments; funerals; red rose bouquet deliveries; 2 a.m. apple pie runs at the local diner; hour-long good night kisses; In Love. Enmeshing of families. Falling in weakness; rising together, united in strength. In love. But there are no more promises of anything eternal or unconditional. I can barely remember what those promises sound like. What they feel like. Instead, I see a glimpse of his shadow crossing the threshold of our marital home for the very last time. Alone. With bags—some in tow and others beneath his eyes. Just months earlier, I’d told Bobby that I wanted a legal separation. Wanted space. Wanted time to be a thirty-five-year-old, Multiple Sclerosis patient, pre-midlife crisis-having freak. Being someone’s wife in a deteriorating relationship just didn’t fit in. I’ve never been a circus juggler. Besides, try keeping all the balls in the air when life starts throwing you flame-burning torches. Then try not getting burned. I was overwhelmed—shit was too heavy—and I had to let something go. The something could have easily been me. Could have been my sanity. Those things disappeared just a bit. But I stopped the hemorrhaging in time. I chose to keep me instead. When Bobby refused to honor my request, I said, “Ok. I get that you don’t want a separation. Never mind that, I’ll be filing for a divorce instead.” I like to compromise when I can. I stare at a random spot on the off-white living room wall avoiding eye contact with the human being who I’d shared my entire life with for the past seventeen years but whom I absolutely no longer know. It’s funny how remarkably relationships can transform. Love of my life to stranger. There’s a complete stranger in my living room. He’s finally leaving me to move on with my life in the 2,000-square foot cathedral-ceilinged, two-bedroom, two-bathroom, beach-front town home rental that we moved into when we learned that we were pregnant. That I was pregnant. I look around—briefly moving my eyes past the spot on the living room wall and see evidence that the second half of my life so far has been shattered and will take God and time and strength to rebuild. I know that rebuilding is exactly what I have to do — I’m a mid-thirties-something with items pending on my bucket list—seeing the world and finding my passion among them. But I’m not sure if I know God anymore either. I’ve always struggled with the notion of blind faith. Much more of a trust-but-then-verify type of human. I’ve never even trusted apple juice. I was probably the only kindergarten student in New York City back in 1985 that stopped trusting apple juice because it looked too much like urine. Still not willing to take the risk. Even today. Discovering the truth mid-sip would be too late. My vision’s blurred. Frosted glass lenses. All I can see are half-painted canvases from Bobby’s half attempts at being an artist, a tower of unopened mail, unpaid bills, half-full medication bottles, informational brochures on Multiple Sclerosis, the chair where washed and unfolded laundry has taken up residence—stacked strategically so as not to topple over—and closet doors unhinged. Literally unhinged. Nothing about this resembles the life we started seventeen years earlier or the life I’ll accept for the next seventeen years or for the balance of my corporal existence. And I can’t figure out what to do with the bloody wedding album. What do you do with the wedding photos once your marriage has ended?