The Mandarin made me Cry

I was on my lunch break.  I drove past the Chinese place that my husband and I used to eat at before the kids came along.  And just like that I felt that sinking feeling.  I drove to a parking lot and turned on NPR and tried to focus on the Ebola crisis, or all the road checks that people in the south of Mexico have to pass through because of the influx of immigration from central America, but all I kept thinking about was he and I sitting across from one another reading the Chinese horoscopes on the back of the laminated menu. 

We were just starting out.  I wonder if our fortunes had predicted we'd be divorcing two kids and twelve years later if we could have even comprehended it.  Could we have done anything to prevent it?  I'd like to think so because there are so many regrets and should haves, but maybe it was because we barely knew each other, or because we didn't have a whole lot in common, or because we married so young.  I don't know.

Finding meaning in a trial is tricky.  I think it's essential though.  If no insight is gained from something so hideously painful then isn't it all for naught?  Aren't you doomed to repeat the same scenario over again?

I'm in a lot of therapy right now and I liken it to vivisection.  You're exposing every tender part of yourself and holding it up to the light.  The dark places you hid away so you didn't have to feel the pain is like trying to hold a hungry tiger in your arms without it consuming you. 

My daughter was assigned to talk in church this past Sunday and the topic was - The Family: A Proclamation to the World blesses my family.  I put the girls to bed and started looking for some talks on the topic.  It became glaringly obvious to me that reading any of these things would hurt and it did.  It hurt like Hell.  There beneath the liquidized crystal in black and white were the things we did not do, the things we tried to do and the things we won't ever do again.  I cried.  So I put on my robe and went upstairs and cried some more to my parents. 

I wanted so much for my children to have the blessings mentioned in that document.  But I had failed them, and he had failed them and none of it was any of their fault. 

So today while I sat in my car in an empty parking lot, heart sore and vulnerable I dialed his number.  I wanted to talk to someone who knew how bad it hurt, because he was hurting too.  I wanted to say, "What happened?  Why?  Why didn't we make it?"  And to a large degree I have those answers, but on the other hand I wanted the comfort of a familiar voice, a voice that might take me back to that lost girl sitting on a vinyl bench across from a lost boy and the two people they were that used to love each other. 

But he didn't answer, and even if he did he wouldn't want to talk to me because it's painful and far too fresh and raw to pretend to be friends after so much damage has been done. 

So I went back to work and cried silently at my desk as I did paper work and prayed to God that one day the pain will end and I'll be able to drive past a restaurant without feeling like bawling my eyes out, that I'll be able to read and teach about eternal marriage even if I never enjoy that blessing while on earth, that I'll be able to call him and talk like two people who care about each other do.  Because I do care and I always will, damn it, even though I wish I didn't.