A mosaic of memories — 20 years
One of the most difficult things to reconcile when confronted with the death of a relationship is the mosaic of memories. I say "mosaic" because that's how they appear in my mind. They are little shards of time that I've pieced together and layered into an overall "picture." They don't reflect reality as it was. They are something new. The good and bad memories flow into one another. The bad memories are lightly interspersed and aren't nearly as shiny as the good memories. It's a false recollection, the way they're put together, but it's all I have now — just a mosaic of memories.
What do I do with them? How do I make sense of them? They come up randomly, seemingly at odds with the feel of the moment. They force their way to the front of my brain and shove other thoughts aside. They sit and stare at me until I decide where they should go on the mosaic. Are they good? Are they bad? Are they just random moments? Do they mean anything at all? Did I leave water boiling on the stove? Dammit, I did. I always do that.
It's difficult to sort all the memories, especially when you continue to see the person you share those memories with frequently. Twenty years is a long time. How many shared vacations did we take? How many nights drinking at Howard's? How many shared meals and utterances forgotten? What about the time I took her to the emergency room after work because she sliced open her finger making me dinner? I remember cleaning our white cupboards afterward, on account she shook her bleeding finger vigorously after she cut it. I still recall the sinking feeling in my stomach as I threw away the sausage and pasta and sauce because she was making it to welcome me home. She always wanted to make our home a refuge, a place I wanted to return to.
What about the hundreds of walks we took together? Our conversations are lost for the most part. I always begged her to keep up, but as time went on and I grew increasingly exhausted, the tables turned. What about the moment when we walked out of the clinic after confirming what we already knew — that she was pregnant — with the only child we were to have? And the moment I had the RAV4 all packed up, ready to haul my sleep-deprived body across the country to start a new life, and I held her as she cried in the rain?
What about the year I harvested a ridiculous amount of garlic from our organic garden? She helped me clip the stems and roots for hours as we both sweated in the mid-summer heat. And the hours we whiled away in our backyard and in our living room, pint glasses and Mason jars in hand, as some drunk friend said something we thought we'd remember forever but were soon to forget? And how about our first day with just the two of us after our son was born? He went for a drive, took pictures, got lost a little. Just like old times.
I remember the first phone call I got at her mom's house. Her basement phone crackled and I had to go upstairs to continue. It was my parents, people I thought I'd never see again. I was drinking with my girlfriend's friends in the basement, sure I had left the old folks behind forever.
What about the first time we had sex — in her mom's basement — the glow of the furnace the only light? How many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of forgotten lovemaking moments followed that?
I've heard some of her stories so many times, as soon as she would start talking about it, I would start nodding. Sometimes we would just have to look at each other in a crowd and know exactly what the other was thinking. No words were necessary. Now, I seem to have no clue what she's talking about. Back up. Start over. Repeat. And I now wonder if she knew me so well so she could simply manipulate me.
Then there were the fights. Not many of them, now that I look those years over. Our fights were usually her crying and me retreating, her asking for something I could not give her. I didn't have the answers. I was a just a man, after all.
There were her numerous accidents. Her mishaps with time and money and my heart. The male friends of hers who were more than friends. Her never-ending parade of men at work she was smitten with. Her constant putdowns of me and my futile efforts to matter to her. The way she talked about me to her coworkers, her family, her friends, to me. Her endless childish manipulations. Her whining, little-girl-lost mode.
Can I say they were mostly good memories? Can I count them either way? Does it matter anymore? She was a woman who loved clutter. She loved the pictures and papers on the refrigerator. There were three photo strips of us from those stupid photobooths over the years. The first one was mere days into our relationship. I looked like I had already disappeared. She had swallowed me up in her avarice.
What about the time she came home, sodden with shame because she had cheated on me with a boy from IRC? What about the time spent with her and Bo as they looked at pornography on someone's laptop? What about all the rides they shared together? The time I told him to shut up? My eventual giving up and letting go of her and the time she told me with tears she was in love with him?
I walked with her the day we heard her dad died. I was always a friend to her, as much as I could be. How many times did I clutch her to my chest as she weathered another emotional storm? How many times did I hold her hand as she held a tissue with the other and cried? How many times did I endure her anger, her resentment, her downright meanness, her carelessness, her apathy, her messiness, her endless energy sucking?
I know I loved her. I know why I left her, too. The soul of a man is torn when he purposes to do something, eventually realizes he's made a mistake and decides to go against his original intentions. It's a defeat of epic proportions. Where does that fit on my mosaic?
There is a little voice telling me I'll never recover from all of this. Some days I believe it. Some days I tell that voice to go jump off a cliff. Some days I consider jumping off a cliff myself. Mostly, I just shuffle through my messy thoughts and feelings, paralyzed with fear this whole scenario will play out again someday.
A side note: I realized that for so many years, including now, I've simply tried to disappear. I've seen my very existence as a problem. In my relationships, my job, my personal life, all I've wanted to do is cease to exist. It's the opposite of a life lived. It's a life forgotten, a life invisible. I go back to the times I was a boy and I crawled into the back of the station wagon or Suburban and imagined I was somewhere else. It seemed like my family wanted me gone. I wanted to die. If I could have thought it into reality, I would have disappeared. Sadly, not mattering became me. Not existing was a dream. This feeling has followed me through life.
I'm seeing now that God won't let me throw myself away. He won't let me disappear. He wants to salvage something out of all this pain. He has plans — plans that involve me. I'm learning to let go of my expectations and my need for perfection and to embrace His way. If anything good has come out of this divorce, it is understanding God on a much deeper level than before. Disappearing is not an option. I appear before His throne every day. Many times.
It may not be art, but this mosaic of memories persists. It rearranges daily, sometimes minute to minute. Some days I feel blessed. Some days I feel cheated. And, apparently, most days I just want to disappear and take my memories with me. But those memories have taught me things, things I cannot easily abandon. They are a part of me, for better or for worse.
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