A year ago I was, unknowingly, days away from the throes of a painful breakup. Three hundred sixty-nine days back I would have a delicate trust broken in the way I most feared and be launched into a period of introspection and blinder-removal that would be solemn and unnerving and intense. It would be the kind of crisis that catalyzes a dark, grieving, quiet period that also breeds the courage to initiate a turning point. Gradually new light would dawn and I would find myself on a path to what has very possibly been the happiest time of my life, the last ten months. So I know it to be true that the light can break through at the end of a long, black tunnel. It is also true that the tunnel is sometimes a requirement for illumination.
Yesterday I sat for forty minutes with the lover who athletically wrangled in my heart, only to squash it like a cow patty under her tires. She was visiting from the South with the woman for whom she left me. She will ship out for Afghanistan in a couple of months with the Army. She’ll be working to save lives and reduce infant mortality in that acutely dangerous area at the border of Pakistan. Her boots will tread the same ground in which Al Queda operatives hide and plan. She will be on her journey.
We drank tea, we chatted about the new lives we now live. We are both happier, calmer. All of the blood and fire we sewed is now water under the bridge. Mostly, it was good to see her face. Mostly, I wanted to hug her tight before she went to war, not knowing how long it would be and under what conditions I’ll see her again.
It wasn’t hard, I wasn’t holding my breath, my chest wasn’t tight through it. Still, I cried when she drove off, and it felt like clear water running out. And though it didn’t hurt, was surprisingly light in the heart area, it hung with me throughout the day and at night I took one of the blue sleeping pills I bought in Barcelona and drank it down with a glass of red wine. I wanted to shut off my thinking brain, to not start the musing process. Just sleep. I set my alarm to wake me before the sun came up.
And it did, and my room was dusty blue-black. I blearily hit Patty Griffin on the playlist and lay in bed with her songs under the comforter. Not recent Patty; Patty from a handful of years back. And it wasn’t until “When it Don’t Come Easy” came on that I realized what I’d chosen. To remember it all. To commemorate it a year later, which my cells had been doing anyway. And then release it back.
