War

I could box them or burn them.
In my eyes, those were the only two feasible options.

His things. They were everywhere.
When I came across a couple of his tshirts jammed into the back of my drawer, I thought again about how my house was full of pieces of him, and all I had done all those months ago was hide them so that I’d hopefully forget for a little while. So that I wouldn’t have to deal with the reminders everyday.
But then…there were the tshirts. In MY drawer. Touching MY shirts.

I could box them or burn them.
In my eyes, those were the only two feasible options.

I stood in the dark kitchen over the sink in the middle of the night, staring through the window overlooking our back pastures as I weighed my options.
I imagined the flames glowing hot and red as I tossed in those worn out black shirts, consuming cotton and thread that had hugged both his body and mine.
I imagined it swallowing the cd he had given me right before the wedding that we had listened to as we drove through the streets of Seattle. Those melodies had been the soundtrack to a trip that had meant something.
I imagined the heat from the fire as I threw in the dozens of pictures I had of us that had once decorated my house, the ones that had captured visits, a smile, a kiss, a hand, an embrace…images that once brought me happiness instead of the most bitter regret. Instead of this anger.
I imagined the flames taking the knick knacks, the papers, the trinkets, the coins, the patches. I imagined it devouring the necklace with the word “faith” inscribed on it as his words telling me that it had a double meaning echoed in my head. “Wear this, and know that I have faith that this will work. No matter the distance, my love for you is real.
Have faith that this will work.”
I did wear it, until I added that broken faith to the stack of promises on the floor.
I imagined the flaming monster devouring the teddy bear he had made for me, and then I paused. Had this man really driven me: bubbly little tender hearted stuffed animal hugging Randi…to burning teddy bears?
Yes. Yes he had.
The wind blew hard outside, catching the high grass out in our pastures in the moonlight. The stalks waved to me from the sea below. I didn’t wave back.
I imagined the flames I set breaking their bonds and accidentally consuming 13 acres of pastures and trees. I am a city girl, after all. What did I know about controlled fires?
I knew I was pissed and about to play with fire, that’s what I knew.
Hmm.
Perhaps boxing was better than burning.

The following day I pulled every reminder I could find from it’s hiding place, and found that a year and a half’s worth of memories fit neatly into a medium sized cardboard box. I wrote a letter. I sealed it shut. I taped the box. I found myself at the post office. And now I sit here, typing about it, wondering if it will eventually make its way across the miles to him or not. All I know is that it won’t be here anymore. And that was the goal, wasn’t it?
Wasn’t it?

Wasn’t it?

Someone told me recently that they saw my heart as if it were covered in barbed wire. As if deep down, I was as distant and unreachable as though I were separated from the world by a crocodile infested moat and a barricaded castle, upon which I sat in the highest turret.
This comment has been on my mind so much lately.
I am a friendly person.
I will smile until my face hurts in a crowd. I am the small talk queen. I am social by nature. I wear a quip on my sleeve.
But how deep does all of that really go?
How hard is it, really, to smile at someone and have a funny comeback?
Not hard at all.
Yet it shows absolutely nothing of what’s truly in my heart.

So perhaps it is true. I’ve been working so hard to move through the things that have happened this year, and it’s a constant effort. I joined a new group. I’m meeting new people. I’m challenging myself to get out there, even when I’m not sure that I want to. I’ve made new friends who have become flashes of warm light within my life. But when I think of my heart, I imagine it as I would the face of a Fight Club participant. A pissed off Fight Club loser.
Some melancholy is bittersweet, a sadness so terrifically miserable you feel a comfort in it’s dark embrace. I’ve been there in years past. Watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Listening to Deathcab for Cutie in between college classes and writing song lyrics on notebooks during Abnormal Pysch. Knowing I’d see the cause of the pain each week was like a salve and a salt in the wound.
But this…this is so much different. There is no comfort, only a constant low dark thrum in the back of my mind: anger.

They say that love is a battlefield, but if that’s true, then what is hate?
Hate is an ugly, bitter, spiteful, disgusting, burning word, and yet I see it here on my screen. I felt it come out of my fingertips, flowing down from my arms, from my shoulders, from my heart.
Love is a battlefield.
Hate is a searing war that kills the fighter.
I’m at war with myself to get rid of these toxic feelings.
I want to be free.
And yet, and yet..
“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate, I do.”

His things no longer haunt my house, and I suppose this night I should feel somewhat liberated from the grotesque presence they represented. I find myself standing on the midnight darkened front porch, calling into the wind for the 7th night for a breakfast food shaped like a cat that never comes.
My heart still aches.

I could have boxed his things or burned them.
In my eyes, those were the only two feasible options.

In the end, I chose to box them.
In the end, they were gone, and so was he.
I’m thankful to be rid of both.
Let’s get on with this show.

*Romans 7:15