The silence is deafening. Chaos was loud, but silence is so much louder. Ten years of coming home to the same mess, arguments, routine and you’d think it would all be so much better without it. But now, I grieve its loss and dread the silence.
This mess is too hard to explain, but it’s been my mess and the only life I’ve known for a decade. But the mess became unbearable and I had to do something, anything, to change my life. I couldn’t stand the lies and the loneliness anymore and thought I’d be better off alone. After all, we haven’t spent much time together in the last year anyway and fighting wasn’t how I wanted to spend our only time together. But time home from work (vacation?) combined with the winter holidays has truly tested my limits.
I wake up alone, spend the day alone and watch the clock all evening, still alone, hoping, waiting for a time that’s late enough to go to bed. I get up and start all over. Alone.
I’m trying hard to be with others, but friends simply aren’t around like they used to be. After all, I spent the last ten years filling my life with HER, her interests, her people, her needs… And, I lost some people, dear to me, who didn’t understand (or tolerate might be a better word) my relationship and chose to leave or, at the very least, create space. The space has now become so vast that when I look around, there’s no one there at all.
Chaos, dear companion, I miss you. And I grieve.