I don’t know how I got here, I really don’t.  Someone told me, not long ago that life is simply a series of decisions.  You have the choice to say either yes or no to any one of those decisions.  So some how, in some way, I chose to be here.  To walk away from everything I knew….

It all seems so long ago now.  Faded.  The memories…. well, they lie in a dusty shoebox that I’ve stored at the back of my mind.  It’s easier that way.  Sometimes I get them out and dust them off… but mostly they simply lie, dormant and undisturbed.

This is a nice town.  The people are nice, polite… distant.  Or maybe the distance is my own.  Knowing people, loving them…. it’s too hard now.  The risk that someone will crack the husk and see the emptiness inside terrifies me.

I’ve been out on dates.  Well-meaning acquaintances trying to put a smile on my face. They are always… nice.  Always dinner, dancing, a good bottle of wine… and goodbye at the door.  If they ask me of my past?  I only smile and change the subject.  The memories have faded, but somehow the pain hasn’t.  I still find myself waking in the middle of the night, aching simply to see him, to see my children.  It’s been four long years and I miss them all like it was yesterday.

Of all the questions I’ve ever asked, and believe me, there’ve been plenty, only one remains.  Is she happy?

Our daughter seems to think she is, but I have this feeling…..  I just want her to be happy.  God, that’s such a lie.  I just want her.  But if I can’t have her, then I want her to be happy.  She deserves that, after everything she has suffered.

I guess I’ve accepted that she will never come back.  The first two years were the hardest, always wanting, hoping that she would walk through that door.  I kept waiting for it to get easier, but it never did.  It was just… different.  It’s an ache, like a hole that can only be filled by her.  But I know now it’ll always be empty.  That’s my punishment for what I did to her.  For breaking her.  For driving her away.

She’s like brilliant sunshine in my world with her gentleness and her bubbling laughter.  And without her, everyday is overcast and grey.  I want her back, but I have no right to ask her.  I tried that once before, and it was a disaster.  I won’t put her through that again.

He came after me, not long after I moved here.  He begged me to come home, but all I could do was look at him and cry.  I loved him so, but he was tearing me to shreds and I couldn’t live like that any more.  At some point, I wondered how it would be possible that there were any tears left to cry.  But somehow they come, clear and freshly agonizing each time.

And so, he left me and true to my request, he hasn’t tried to contact me since.  Sometimes in my weaker moments I wish he would, I wish he would rush in here and sweep me off my feet like the wild impulsive fool he used to be. But then, I guess we have both been hurt too much to wear our hearts on our sleeves anymore.  Caution rules our thoughts and actions and that’s the way it should be.  Because for all my weak moments, I know I could never survive that kind of pain again.  I barely survived it the last time and I know that part of me died when I left them.  How could it not?

My son… our son….  I wish I had made this distinction when it really mattered.  Maybe it might have made some difference.  To her, to him… to all of us.  I made so many screw-ups, it’s hard to know which one rates more highly then the others.  For all our experience with mixed families, we sure screwed this one up well and good.  We all bear blame, but the boy knew exactly what he was doing.  He admitted it after she had gone, the little bastard actually gloated about how he had made her life such a misery….  At which point, I did what she had wanted all along and kicked him out.  He’s living somewhere in LA now but we don’t talk much. 

How do you reconcile yourself with the knowledge that the child you raised cause someone you love so much pain?  I still don’t know.  And I still have nightmares when I hear her crying for me and I just don’t know how to reach her.  She still consumes my thoughts and owns my heart and I know she always will.  Pretending otherwise has only got me into trouble and hurt other people in the past.  I won’t lie to myself again.  I can’t see a picture of her without aching to hold her.  I can’t not love her.  She’s in my blood.  But she’s not mine.  Not any more.

Our daughter tells me that he doesn’t date, that he hasn’t seen a single woman romantically since I left.  I don’t want to believe that, I don’t want to think of him all alone.  At least one of us should be happy.

But my heart knows it is true.  And somehow it moves me to know that he might miss me as much as I miss him.  Sometimes I wake at night in tears, crying out for him.  Sometimes I feel as though the sensation of his arms around me would be all it would take to let me feel happiness again.  And then the memories of the pain returns and I falter.

The sky is so blue today and my friend Dani has come to take me to lunch.  I don’t feel much like lunch. Today is the sixth anniversary of our wedding.  Our much anticipated, much celebrated wedding.  Who could have known how things would turn out…?

I can still remember the joy in his gloriously blue eyes as I walked up the aisle toward him.  I don’t think I could have been happier.  And then, later that night, when we began our honeymoon… the passion in his touch was enough to burn….

I don’t know why I torture myself like this, with thoughts of what was and what could have been….  I promised myself to keep the memories stored away and instead I inspect them with increasing frequency.  And somehow I just can’t seem to help it any more.

Of course, Dani knows none of this.  She knows nothing but the brittle shell that hides the emptiness.  And the emptiness bleeds in lonely silence as I die, little by little, day by day.

I can’t concentrate today.  Today… it brings too many memories.  From the moment I woke up….  I don’t know why, but it’s worse this year than any year since she left.  I can’t seem to get her out of my head.  Every time I stop for just a moment… I hear her laugh… smell her perfume.  I feel as though I am in a hell of my own making every minute I draw breath without her here.

People have said that it’s time I started dating again.  That I can’t wallow in self-pity.  But the truth is, how do you fall in love when your heart is three thousand miles away with the only woman you’ve ever really loved?  How do you sit across from someone and smile and laugh and make small talk when you would give the earth for those eyes across from you to be the breathtaking amber-gold eyes that haunt your dreams?  Tell me that would you?  Cause I’d really like to know how I’m supposed to forget her.  If anyone has any suggestions, I’d really like to hear them because I’ve had about enough of feeling like this.

I can’t believe I let Dani talk me into this.  He’s nice enough, I suppose, in a bland sort of way.  The conversation is easy, the food good, so why do I feel like my best friend just died?  Why do I have this hollow in the pit of my stomach that nothing will fill?  No, on second thoughts, don’t tell me. I know well enough.

It was supposed to get easier, wasn’t it?  Everyone says that, the hackneyed ‘time heals all wounds’ is bandied about by folks too uncomfortable with a depth of pain they don’t understand to deal with grief.  Running away was supposed to make it easier.  Not seeing him every day was definitely supposed to make things easier.  I thought.  But dear God, I see him in my dreams almost every night.  Isn’t that just as bad?

Sometimes I think, if I try hard enough, I can remember every words he ever said to me, recall every touch as though it’s imprinted into my flesh.  The memories come often enough these days for it to be possible.

Blandman tried to kiss me at the front door but I smiled and turned away.  Sometimes I wonder how I can be attractive to anyone any more.  I feel so dead and empty inside, surely it must show.  I can’t be that good an actress…

I saw her handwriting today on an envelope addressed to our girl.  I had this agonizing urge to tear the damned paper open and devour her words, to read her life, to hold at least a little part of her in my hands.

But our daughter came in to find me staring at the envelope and she took it from me with such a sad look in her eyes that it made my heart break all over again. But as she walked away, I swear, I could smell her fragrance.  It was on the envelope, I know because I found the torn envelope later and as I smoothed it and put it away, the scent evoked so many memories that I could barely breath with the jagged onslaught of reminiscence.

Hell, how pathetic is that I ask you?  Oh God, pathetic, maybe, but I just don’t know how much longer I can do this without her. Just waking in the morning in our empty bed is enough to destroy my day before it even starts.  The thought of never seeing her, never touching her, never laughing with her again…  it’s slowly killing me.  I always thought we were stronger together than apart.  Now I know the truth in all its blind desperation.  I am nothing without her at my side, without her to guide me.  I merely exist from day to day, make all the right noses and function adequately enough, but there is no meaning, no joy….  No light.

I need her because she is my heart.  It’s that simple.

She received my letter today and she called me.  It was so wonderful to hear her sweet voice; it was like a ray of sunlight in my world.  I miss her so.

She told me he saw the letter.  That he knew it was from me.  Sometimes what she doesn’t say is more eloquent than what she does.

She’s worried about him.  She’s worried about us both.  And I can’t reassure her that everything will be all right.  I only wish I could, after all, that’s what a mother is supposed to do, isn’t it?  Not fly halfway across the country and abandon everything and everyone she’s ever known, simply in an attempt to stop the pain.  A failed attempt at that.

It’s not going to be all right, is it?  How can it be all right when I’m living without my heart and soul?

Dani came by; she’s worried about me too.  Says I’m pale and drawn.  How can I tell her that I haven’t slept for weeks?  That every time I close my eyes, I see him and I just can’t suffer that torment night after night.  So I read late into the night and try to make it through the day the best I can.

Last night was the worst for a long time.  I fell asleep in a chair by the lamp.  The window was open and a cool breeze was stirring my hair.  It was almost like his touch, like a gentle caress that leaves you aching for more.

I dreamed that he was with me.  I dreamed that he had come to take me home, that he was making me his once again.  Dear God, it was so real, so sensual, so beguiling.  The joy and the desire were so very real….

But here I am, awake and alone.  Celibate and alone.  Aching and alone.  And I’m beginning to wonder if the risk of being in love with him is definitively worse than the pain of being without him….

I knew this was a mistake, from the moment I agreed to let her take me to lunch.  She had this mischievous twinkle in her eye, the same look her mother used to get when she was up to something.  But how do you say no to a young woman who has you wrapped around her little finger?  I’d do anything for that girl and she knows it.

We ran into Victor on the way in.  He was wearing his usual know-it-all, smug grin.  Too bad neither of us knew anything back when it would have counted.  Still, that is all ancient history and I know in his way, he feels as bad as I do.  Not that it does either of us the slightest bit of good.

She’s taken the waiter aside and she’s ordering for us both.  What the hell is she up to?  Oh dear God…. she’s set me up on a blind date?  How many times have I explained to the girl that I have absolutely no interest in dating?  How could she spring this on me like this?  When I get back to the apartment, she’s going to hear….

Oh God, that blonde that just walked in….  Great, now I’m hallucinating. 

She’s coming this way….

Oh man, if I’m dreaming, please, nobody wake me.  Ever.  She’s an absolute vision and she’s smiling at us.  At me. 

Is this really happening?  Is she really here?  Has she really come home to us?

She stops in front of me and my heart is thumping so audibly that I’m almost afraid it will deafen me.  But she’s still smiling and her eyes are sparkling with tears.

“Doc?”

She holds out her hands and I see she’s wearing her wedding ring.  I must look like a complete idiot the way I’m staring at her as I take her hands in mine.

“Hi honey,” she says quietly, and the way she looks at me, I feel as though we’re the only two people in the restaurant….  “I’m home.”