Today I feel restless, like an autumn leaf, barely clinging to my tree in a chill breeze, waiting for the inevitable fall. I can't sit still, tied to what was, but I'm too uncertain about what will be to let go of my past completely just yet. So I keep moving, doing, being, but I'm making no concrete progress, as if I am living my life on the treadmill that is this limbo.

I feather my nest, trying to make this place so long shared with him comfortable for me alone. I clean, I move things around, I pack things away, I change the decor. Still, he haunts the forgotten corners of these rooms. The more I struggle to erase him, the more I merely create cracks in the facade of my strength and independence.

Yet I don't miss him now, at least not the way I did when he first left. Perhaps this is the most surprising thing, that I could learn to get used to his absence in such a short time after so many years of living with him. Still, at night, when my racing mind chases away much needed sleep, regardless of whether or not the thoughts are of him, I am aware of an empty place in my very soul. It is not so much missing him specifically, or even wanting another PERSON around at all, though loneliness is a part of it. It is like a hole, perhaps signifying the hopes and dreams of the past from which I am distancing myself, in need of filling with a new vision of a life apart from him.

I don't think I realized when I married that taking his name as part of my own would tie me to him far longer than the wedding band or vows would. Every time I sign a check or a charge slip, he is there. Every time I pay bills, he is there. Every time I check my email, he is there. Every time I see my paycheck, he is there. He is everywhere and nowhere at the same time, floating at the edges of my consciousness yet remaining out of reach.

I am certain that he has already made his decision. Perhaps he made it not that long ago, when he left; perhaps even before that. He simply lacks the courage to convey that decision to me and get on with the monotonous and unpleasant chore of legally dividing the life we shared for so long.

So I am waiting... waiting... waiting... But I find myself growing impatient to remove the rest of these shackles that bind me to him and find my new self; my new life. I'm growing ready to let go of this old branch; to let the old self die and be reborn to a self I can't yet envision but that I'm looking forward to getting to know.

7:37:34 PM    dish []