Sometimes I wonder if the body can tell time and recognize memory. I haven’t slept well for the past few days. Maybe it’s the long walks I’ve been taking. Maybe it’s the change in temperature. Maybe my body is remembering this time last year. I can remember standing under the neighbor’s tree in the front yard as the guys from Mambo Movers unloaded the truck. I was intentionally trying to take notice of the day, it was slightly overcast and a little chilly. It was the start of a new chapter – we were bubbling over with excitement. I remember coming out from the garage and seeing Carolyn and B (my ex-fiancee) standing together – this was a new sense of home.
I didn’t go to bed last night thinking about this. I didn’t wake up this morning thinking about this. Something felt off, but I figured it was a lack of sleep. I took nap on the sofa and when I tried to think about what the rest of my day might entail, I remembered it was the last Sunday of the month – one year ago it was moving day. Last year I posted a pic of B’s empty place on Facebook. Friends reached out to say congratulations. The movers were there at either 9 or 10 in the morning – 3 or 4 skinny guys that worked quickly.
After the movers left our place in the burbs (early afternoon), we began to unpack and move stuff around. Zelle napped.
I didn’t wake up today and say oooh look, the sun is shining, I think I’ll sit around and think back to last year. But, when it hits, you just sort of bow down to it. You accept that you have an uninvited house guest, maybe make it some coffee, knowing full-well that it’s probably going to get comfortable and stay a while. Before it arrived, I could feel a heaviness, a lethargy. I didn’t want to write or read or exercise – maybe my body knew before my mind could figure out what was going on. These things happen less often than they used to, but I had forgotten how debilitating they can be… how suddenly small things become almost unmanageable. Nick has been throwing up most of the morning, and I couldn’t look at him and not feel this incredible weight of sadness.
I knew nothing of these feelings a year ago. I’m sure I’ll write about them a bit over the next week or so. When I have these feelings – this sense of loss that permeates everything else… actually it’s just sort of a rawness in which all other emotions are brought to the surface, it makes me feel really bad for not understanding them sooner. I could hear B when she would say she needed space or time to heal or just some calm. And I could say, sure, no problem, but hearing is different than feeling. She left five days before the anniversary of her late husband’s passing. I know I’m probably not going to want to talk to anyone on the anniversary of our breakup. I can’t imagine how trapped she might have felt knowing she might have needed solitude and would have trouble finding it in her new home. And she would have been right – I, like a lot of people, can be smothering with affection and concern. I say things like “help me understand” without realizing that’s just more work for the other person at a time when they may not want to do any work. Having never felt it, I wasn’t capable of thinking these things back then. Just as I’m trying to wrap these thoughts up (for now), one of those newly appreciated Kiwanuka songs has come on… there’s something a little uplifting about it.