I went out tonight. Presently sitting at a little round metal table, tucked away by a fountain frequented by Grackle birds. I learned the name of this particular bird from a woman whom has known me since I first fell in love with her son over twenty years ago. She came to visit me here in Texas shortly after we reconnected. I remember holding her again, after she walked into my house without knocking – not big on boundaries, that one, but that day I did not mind it. I cried as I felt her arms around me… we went birding and she taught me native birds here. Every time I see one now, I think of her.

The Pearl District is very happening right now. Packed with families and friends talking, laughing, engaged. Children run soaking wet over the splash pad, and roll around the turf in the middle of the square. I’ve seen cheerful High School Seniors taking photos in cap and gown, it is close to Graduation time. One engagement shoot – you can tell because they seem all too happy about kissing in front of 500 strangers. There’s a man to my left playing an accordion dressed in some tradition garb, if I close my eyes maybe I’m somewhere in Europe, the melody isn’t at all American. I love it. Reminds me in some strange way of my time in France – a place I’ll return to someday to write my third novel. Or perhaps Tuscany, I hear that is good for single Bohemian women.

Now, though, I’m a lonely American in a flowery, flowing dress. The wind is strong and blows it open, I think I’ve accidentally flashed at least five people. I took care to get dressed, put on makeup, and go Downtown, though I still feel quite under the weather after an illness knocked me out the past day and a half. I knew that I could not just stay home. That place is a mausoleum of a torn apart family, every inch of it a memory of the man who left. I needed out, even though I’d probably do well to get as much rest as I can… outside, fresh air, and countless faces with no names is better than isolation.

I’ve sat here a good long while. Just watching them. The others. People with lives just as complex and complicated, happy and sad, as my own.

The hardest is the ones holding hands, walking, laughing, together.

Because, so many times, so many, it was he and I – that couple people see and smile towards, a gentle unspoken nod to love recognizing love.

I’m calling this trip out exposure therapy.

Because there’s a melancholy in my chest. An ache. And I’ve thought a lot about being good anyway – choosing that – I am trying so hard to refocus, mind over matter and all that shit, but this close into his departure it is still a beautiful pain where my heart used to be. A hallowed space, a missing piece.

I keep thinking, surely I’m not the only one here whose feeling that transitional season full-force. The swift and sudden change from us to me. From we to him. From together to apart. Certainly, there is another lonely heart here. And maybe he or she is feeling it just as I am, but they got up, dressed, and went out anyway.
It takes strength, you know. It takes intentionality. It takes ripping off the bandaid to walk alone where he was once beside me, too many times to count. This was our family spot on sunny afternoons. Now, it is a relic, a place I have to reclaim as my own, apart from him.

Anyone who claims that doesn’t hurt is a pretending liar, or at best, woefully unable to acknowledge and feel real feelings. I know one of those actually, he’s the one who left… this does hurt.

But it gets better. It must get better. I’ll keep trying until it does. I have to learn to be alone after so long. I have to touch habitually the space where a ring once claimed my status as his, where I showed the world, I am taken. Now, I am ever-unclaimed.
I am strong enough. To endure. I am not worried about that. But this does hurt.

I wonder how long this will hurt…

And I wonder, why it doesn’t hurt him.
But I guess that’s a thought for another day.

Time to walk the river before the sun sets. Smile at strangers and think, I wonder if they can see my heart is half what it was. Maybe, some can tell. But I’ll still muster a smile.

I can do the hardest things, and none of these people will ever know that. I do, and that is great for me today. I stepped into my power, and reclaimed a small portion, a tiny sliver, of what was taken from me for so many years.. I am strong enough, good enough, worthy of love. I am not bad, and wrong, and broken, as I was told.

I do hard things.
Even when it hurts.