Emotional Disturbance in the Field

This past weekend, I was very unsettled. Couldn't quite put my finger on it, but now it seems pretty clear.

I hadn't yet come to the solid realization that there was absolutely no hope that my previous life was over, and I needed to embrace my new one. I've been working like a demon to avoid thinking about my former husband, my old gallery and the friends I left behind in Kentucky. Marrying him had been a leap of faith and I was betrayed in so many ways, yet I carried him in my heart for years after I signed the papers to release him from his marriage to me.

I see where he has married the woman he met during the last year of our marriage. The one he took to Utah to meet his son, the one he traveled to see in Ohio while telling me he was working and the one he took to Florida to get his daughter's blessing. I saw the photo of him standing with his new bride, and I saw my husband there. Not hers.

I had always held out hope that the man I had laughed with, traveled to foreign countries with, and the one who held my heart captive for years would call someday and tell me he had never quite gotten over me.

But, life moves on, it did move on. Time to deal with it.

But, what does one do with all the memories? Pack them up with the photographs and store them in the closet? Bury them in the back yard and hope the dog doesn't dig them up? Sure, we can spend time with others, we can work to forget, we can move to other states, adopt other relatives and hang with other friends....but do they disappear? Dissolve?

As I drink coffee this morning, I know that it's not over for me. It needs to be over.