After Christmas
I was too stunned to speak.
I came in to my home,
walked to my bedroom,
and sat on the edge of the bed,
reeling and keening,
before I looked up and saw that his closet was empty.
Everything was gone.
My phone rang and I answered thinking it was him-
that this was just some kind of sick joke.
But it wasn't.
My friend on the phone couldn't understand me at all at first.
I was nonsensical as I moved through the house and it really hit me that he had taken my truck while I was at the restaurant and moved out. That he knew he had when he left me standing in the yard.
As my words became more coherent, I found myself in the kitchen looking down at some money he had left on the counter and the debit card to our shared account.
It was sinking in.
"It's over," I told my friend on the phone, "I can't stay here."
And I didn't.
My friend bought a plane ticket and I flew to Ohio the next morning.
I slept for three days.
I should have stayed home.
I was a coward.
Afraid to face the holiday alone without my kids and in so much pain, I ran away.
The trip ended poorly and I came home.
It was hard to go to bed at night and harder to get up in the mornings.
I cried on friends' shoulders.
HARD.
The pain would come out of no where and slap me in the face.
The sting and shame would rise on my face as surely as if a quick hand had actually met the flesh of my cheek.
Things he had left behind.
His words.
His face when he left me.
Innocent questions from friends or family.
Or nights punctuated by images that seemed infinitely real until I found myself sitting straight up in bed gulping air and listening to nothing, but the sound of my breathing and the blood rushing in my ears.
I holed up and didn't talk to my friends after awhile.
*I* was sick of hearing me.
Surely everyone else had to be.
At some point, I went out on a cold blustery day and started taking down the Christmas decorations from out in the yard. From our front windows, my oldest son saw me struggling with some lines Layne had used to put lights high in our pine trees for our kids and an inside joke about outdoing the neighbors.The frustration of the knots in the line combined with the memories of he and I in the moonlight laughing and anticipating how happy the kids would be when they got their first look at our handiwork was slaying me when my oldest son's hands came from behind me, took the lines out of my own and softly said, "I got it, Mom. It's going to be ok."
I went from sad, frustrated and raw to humbled and proud of my sixteen year old.
I moved between all those emotions and on into stoic and resolved that day.
I wanted my kids to see that I was handling things with as much grace as I could and yet, also doing the things I needed to do to preserve myself and navigate a loss.
It had been a terrible couple of weeks.
With the risk of sounding melodramatic, save the loss of my first pregnancy, they were the saddest, hardest days of my life.
I ripped myself to shreds with self doubt, shame, doubt, recrimination, self pity, guilt and fear.
At some point though and I really think it was the day I took the lights down and saw those wonderful new parts of my son, I started to absorb some of the advice I had been given since the night he had left.
I had to get up and face the day.
Make lists.
Try to sleep, this was the hardest.
Eat, this was the second hardest.
Dress well.
Wear makeup.
Engage my kids.
Make plans.
and not look back.
I started out small.
I would get out of bed and talk myself into making it to the shower.
From the shower I would concentrate on getting dressed.
From dressing I would eat or do a chore.
It wasn't perfect and I wobbled, but the more I did things the better it got.
I controlled my boundaries by blocking his email and phone.
I think I did as much as I could to distract myself and not think about what had happened.
When the humiliation would flashback or the sudden abandonment or cruel way he left washed over me, my eyes WOULD fill up, the air would push out of my chest and I would whisper a prayer. A simple one another friend suggested: "help me". I would whisper it, take a deep breath and get on with it. And when help came with a friend's call, text or email or I would come to my own revelation or introspection, I would whisper, "Thank you." There were A LOT of "help mes" and "thank yous" whispered.
My biggest fear was having to go back to work. I dreaded going back to work in Galveston where I would pass the Justice Center and all the places we would frequent together--where I would run into our mutual friends and eventually have to answer the questions. We live in small city. I felt embarrassed because I couldn't answer the whys. I didn't know them. I mean, I had my suspicions, but because of how devastating and sudden, both uncharacteristic of Layne, the break had been, I had too many questions of my own to afford more than vague answers.
Still, I went about reintegrating into Galveston the the way I went at getting around while I was on vacation: just a step at a time. A friend kept texting the word "autonomy" and "keep going" and so I did.
Almost a month after Christmas Eve, I went out to do traffic duty for my third graders. It was raining and I remember being pleased with myself for being prepared for the weather with the right attire and an umbrella. I was taking my triumphs where I could get them! I chatted with the teacher loading the kids in their cars and didn't realize he was standing behind me on the corner and had been for quite some time.
I came in to my home,
walked to my bedroom,
and sat on the edge of the bed,
reeling and keening,
before I looked up and saw that his closet was empty.
Everything was gone.
My phone rang and I answered thinking it was him-
that this was just some kind of sick joke.
But it wasn't.
My friend on the phone couldn't understand me at all at first.
I was nonsensical as I moved through the house and it really hit me that he had taken my truck while I was at the restaurant and moved out. That he knew he had when he left me standing in the yard.
As my words became more coherent, I found myself in the kitchen looking down at some money he had left on the counter and the debit card to our shared account.
It was sinking in.
"It's over," I told my friend on the phone, "I can't stay here."
And I didn't.
My friend bought a plane ticket and I flew to Ohio the next morning.
I slept for three days.
I should have stayed home.
I was a coward.
Afraid to face the holiday alone without my kids and in so much pain, I ran away.
The trip ended poorly and I came home.
It was hard to go to bed at night and harder to get up in the mornings.
I cried on friends' shoulders.
HARD.
The pain would come out of no where and slap me in the face.
The sting and shame would rise on my face as surely as if a quick hand had actually met the flesh of my cheek.
Things he had left behind.
His words.
His face when he left me.
Innocent questions from friends or family.
Or nights punctuated by images that seemed infinitely real until I found myself sitting straight up in bed gulping air and listening to nothing, but the sound of my breathing and the blood rushing in my ears.
I holed up and didn't talk to my friends after awhile.
*I* was sick of hearing me.
Surely everyone else had to be.
At some point, I went out on a cold blustery day and started taking down the Christmas decorations from out in the yard. From our front windows, my oldest son saw me struggling with some lines Layne had used to put lights high in our pine trees for our kids and an inside joke about outdoing the neighbors.The frustration of the knots in the line combined with the memories of he and I in the moonlight laughing and anticipating how happy the kids would be when they got their first look at our handiwork was slaying me when my oldest son's hands came from behind me, took the lines out of my own and softly said, "I got it, Mom. It's going to be ok."
I went from sad, frustrated and raw to humbled and proud of my sixteen year old.
I moved between all those emotions and on into stoic and resolved that day.
I wanted my kids to see that I was handling things with as much grace as I could and yet, also doing the things I needed to do to preserve myself and navigate a loss.
It had been a terrible couple of weeks.
With the risk of sounding melodramatic, save the loss of my first pregnancy, they were the saddest, hardest days of my life.
I ripped myself to shreds with self doubt, shame, doubt, recrimination, self pity, guilt and fear.
At some point though and I really think it was the day I took the lights down and saw those wonderful new parts of my son, I started to absorb some of the advice I had been given since the night he had left.
I had to get up and face the day.
Make lists.
Try to sleep, this was the hardest.
Eat, this was the second hardest.
Dress well.
Wear makeup.
Engage my kids.
Make plans.
and not look back.
I started out small.
I would get out of bed and talk myself into making it to the shower.
From the shower I would concentrate on getting dressed.
From dressing I would eat or do a chore.
It wasn't perfect and I wobbled, but the more I did things the better it got.
I controlled my boundaries by blocking his email and phone.
I think I did as much as I could to distract myself and not think about what had happened.
When the humiliation would flashback or the sudden abandonment or cruel way he left washed over me, my eyes WOULD fill up, the air would push out of my chest and I would whisper a prayer. A simple one another friend suggested: "help me". I would whisper it, take a deep breath and get on with it. And when help came with a friend's call, text or email or I would come to my own revelation or introspection, I would whisper, "Thank you." There were A LOT of "help mes" and "thank yous" whispered.
My biggest fear was having to go back to work. I dreaded going back to work in Galveston where I would pass the Justice Center and all the places we would frequent together--where I would run into our mutual friends and eventually have to answer the questions. We live in small city. I felt embarrassed because I couldn't answer the whys. I didn't know them. I mean, I had my suspicions, but because of how devastating and sudden, both uncharacteristic of Layne, the break had been, I had too many questions of my own to afford more than vague answers.
Still, I went about reintegrating into Galveston the the way I went at getting around while I was on vacation: just a step at a time. A friend kept texting the word "autonomy" and "keep going" and so I did.
Almost a month after Christmas Eve, I went out to do traffic duty for my third graders. It was raining and I remember being pleased with myself for being prepared for the weather with the right attire and an umbrella. I was taking my triumphs where I could get them! I chatted with the teacher loading the kids in their cars and didn't realize he was standing behind me on the corner and had been for quite some time.
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