Oh that again?

He's moving... back to the opposite coast... my ex-husband... today may have been the day when he left.

I thought this would feel better than it does right now.  It was over a year ago when he told me he was going to move away and I have been anticipating a sense of freedom from that distance.  Instead it feels very sad right now.

I don't know who he is.  He turned out to be someone different than the man I thought I was married to, and I miss that person desperately, and, idiotically,  I keep looking for that person.  Maybe he has changed again!  Maybe "he" is back!

He doesn't want to be the person I believed he was.

.....

Did I tell you we met when I was 16 and were nearly inseparable for about 16 years?  And now I don't know exactly when he is moving away.  We drove into this city together, him driving the moving truck, me driving his car.  We were supposed to be getting a fresh start, I thought it was going to be a fresh start as a couple but found out he was having "discrete" sex with women he didn't even know a few months after we got here.  (Ok, I found evidence of him soliciting dates and going to meet one woman, but he said he didn't sleep with her.  Regardless of believing him on that point, does the actual act really matter that much?).  The problems had started years before.  I have been so dumb where he is concerned for YEARS and still I think about him, not with longing for him but longing for closure and longing for understanding how things went so wrong and longing for verification that it wasn't all my fault.  It feels like there is still so much that needs to be said, but we speak different languages.

Back several months ago when I moved there was so much of "our" stuff to go through.  A houseful of our things.  And even though I was so angry with him for not signing the damn papers that could have prevented the move I kept setting things aside for him.  Although he had left 3 years earlier I was still hanging onto his family heirlooms and his mementos, until I came across our wedding album and realized that he didn't have a single photo from our wedding.  Not only had he left me behind - me who who was drowning in grief, so I kind of understand wanting to leave that behind - he left all mementos of me behind.  He left every reminder of our marriage, like none of it had mattered.  And I began throwing away his things.

.....

Moving definitely brought many things about our marriage and divorce to the surface.  There were so many feelings left unfelt during those years of numbing antidepressants so it's good to be working through them now.  It's good to be living in a place that feels safe while slogging through that mess.  One thing that is interesting is that Toren's death and the end of my marriage feel like separate things now.  They happened relatively close together and were intertwined for a long time, which was a shame because it complicated how I felt about Toren.

So he is moving and I am not gleeful as imagined... but it won't always hurt.  Maybe it won't hurt by the end of this week.  Maybe someday thoughts of him will only rarely peek in.  And in the meantime I will take good care of myself, like by going to read a charming book right now!  (Do you like murder mysteries?  I recently discovered the Leigh Koslow Mystery Series which are adorable!  They are older books - which means super cheap for the Kindle!  book 1 was free! - and they are not too gory or scary.  There is a pregnancy in book 1 but it didn't upset me and if you think it would be a trigger for you book 2 doesn't rely on information from book 1)