Six Boxes

So today I realized that my entire life fits in six boxes. Literally.

I came to this realization when I received the last five boxes of my stuff from my ex, Chas.

Chas and I broke up rather messily about two months ago although, in retrospect, we both needed it to happen as badly as it hurt.

Breakups SUCK. There is just no way around that one.

And this one doubly sucked because I actually was still in love with the guy when I broke up with him. Or he broke up with me...or we broke up with each other. Whatever, still sucks.

Funny thing about this one was that it took us finally having a week of happiness to realize just how miserable we had been making each other for nearly three years.

It was July 4th week and I had taken a vacation to be down at the Jersey shore with him. I normally commuted between Philadelphia/Jersey and DC, where I work, once a week. But I had slowed down on the commuting. I had started to choose staying in DC more than wanting to be in Jersey or Philly. We'd always had a "passionate" relationship but I was beginning to realize the fights were getting more ugly, more personal. More frequent.

But that week we had no fights at all. We did things like go to the beach together, go to the pool together, garden together, cook together, go out to dinner with friends together...you know, all the supposedly "normal" stuff couples do together.

And that's when I realized that we were not really together anymore. The fact that I was so amazed that this particular week we were doing stuff "together" made me realize that for well over a year we hadn't been doing anything together consistently but fight. That for almost a year, we hadn't been together at all.

No, nothing is ever uniform because life is not uniform. So of course there were wonderful weekends and days and moments the entire time. But there were long, long stretches between those weekends and days and moments. Even if they were only seconds. There were times when we could barely be around each other because we were so TIRED of each other. Too tired to fight, too tired to love. Just too damn tired.

So we had this amazing week together before I got on a plane to go to Liberia for ten days and I was happy.

And I was so shocked to feel happy that I knew it was over.

What then commenced was likely the worst breakup in my entire of history of breakups. It involved friends, family, pets, possessions, money, my job, my ego, my self-worth...all of those things. It pulled into itself every single aspect of my life. It was like a two-month long vortex where I just surrendered to hell.

And, boy, do I do the "surrender to hell" thing quite well. I spent days, maybe even a week, in bed. I missed work. I stopped talking to many of my friends. I barely spoke to my family.

I cried a lot. A LOT.

I was THAT friend who called and begged her other friends to tell her that she was still a good person. I made people recount, in painful detail, the good things that they remembered me doing or the good things they remembered feeling about me. Hell, I made my mother tell me stories she remembered about me when I was, like, six years old, that might give me a glimpse into the soul I supposedly had but had most certainly lost.

I was your worst nightmare if I was your friend or your family. I was THAT person who fell apart in the grocery store shopping for a friend's birthday party looking at ground meat because it reminded me of meatloaf. And he loved my meatloaf. And yet he never really loved me and how much I put into making that meatloaf perfect.

Yoga made me too open to emotions so I stopped doing yoga.

I supplemented this with shopping. Which, while it is nice to acquire new things, ended up making me realize I had all these new things and no one to show them to. And no where to put them because I had now abdicated not only my relationship but also my residence.

Once again, I had abdicated my residence like some sort of crazy nomad.

I had nowhere to live, again.

That's only partially true, of course. Because I live in DC with two of the most wonderful people that God has gifted us with as humans. Seriously. (And if anyone reading this has any qualms about same sex marriage and the validity of "that" love, I would dare you to be around these two for ten minutes and not wish YOU could experience that for a few minutes. I have never been so surrounded by love or loved. And complete and utter lack of judgement. THAT is something every human should experience at least once. If God is not in that equation, then I don't know who the hell is).

But it is THEIR house and even if I have my own space and my own place...it's not mine.

And my best friend in the world also opened her house to me every weekend. But, same as above. She makes gardening look like God's very own work. It is almost blinding beauty. I can't take enough pictures or be grateful enough for being this lucky to have such sheer beauty in my line of sight every weekend.

But. Still.

So it has taken two months. It has taken a loss of several friends who just couldn't take "this Patti" anymore. Who couldn't figure out why I couldn't seem to dig myself out of this seemingly minor situation--as compared to others---and kept sitting down and wanting to quit.

Who were sick of me crying over ground meat on an otherwise innocent Tuesday night in a grocery store.

Today those boxes arrived.

The remaining five of them. The remaining five boxes that represent my life...thus far.

All nearly 38 years of it.

In six boxes.

That's immensely sobering, by the way.

And I kept waiting for something to happen. For some emotional eruption. For me to freak out as I did when the first box arrived. For me to call someone and drag them into my drama. For me to cry. For me to go to bed. For me to want a glass of wine at an inappropriate time. For me to want to call or write HIM and tell him what an awful mistake we made in breaking up.

I did none of it. I felt none of it.

I wrote this instead.

Not sure if this qualifies as "healing" but oddly I don't feel awful or numb any longer.

Progress, if nothing else.