361: A day of reflection
I always forget that I’m not a single woman anymore. I’m a single mother. But I still schedule myself like I’m a single woman. I know that I’m a fast writer. I know that I can churn out a novel in a few weeks if I need to. But I also don’t think about the world around me. Life continues, even when I’m writing. The kids still need to eat, I still need to do homework, the dog still needs to be walked. So I’ll never be the speedy writer I used to be.
Yesterday was a good day for me. I got two checks in the mail for various things that I’d overpaid in the past. Not huge amounts, but when you’re broke, every check is precious. Every amount is huge. And it’s enough to pay extra on a credit card balance this month. That’s cool, because I have to get my credit cards in line before I can do the next step in my financial plan.
Today is going to be a day of reflection for me. In 2001, I was still married to my ex-husband, who I’ll be referring to as Clueless for the duration of this blog experiment. We lived in this crappy but cute little house in Haltom City. He was at work, getting ready to open up the restaurant he waited tables at. I was taking advantage of the baby sleeping in.
Then he called me and told me to turn on the TV. 9/11/01 was devastating for many people. Not just for the city of New York, but also for those who had family there. My grandfather’s family lives in Albany, so I didn’t worry too much about them. But who I did worry about was my ex-fiance. We’d parted a couple years earlier, he’d moved to New York to work for some company up there. I don’t even remember the name of the company now.
He was one of the many missing after the Twin Towers fell, never to be recovered. I still see his mother every once in a while. His daughter is in her teens now, in her senior year in high school. After 9/11, she was moved back down here to Texas to live with her mother. I can’t think of this day without thinking of them. I didn’t lose family, so I feel like I’m sort of on the outside, watching the misery. He and I had been done for a couple years. He and his daughter were happy. Her mother had remarried.
It’s a pointless loss of life. When I talk about the anger I feel every day, this is a big part of it. While my divorce may have catalyzed it, that anger had roots in 9/11. I don’t think it’s the cause, not completely. But it exacerbated it. Because he was a decent, honest man that I loved so much. Our reasons for splitting never had to do with not loving each other and everything to do with our place in life in that moment. I wasn’t ready and I let him go. And then I lost him forever.
I know what you’re thinking. I was married, to someone else. How can I sit there and say that I loved him when I married someone else?
I was scared of being happy. He would have done anything to make me happy and somehow, I didn’t think that I deserved it. So I let him walk out of my life, move halfway across the country, to his eventual death.
It’s one of those things where you will always wonder. What if?
But it’s his memory now that drives me to think about my life and what’s become of it. Sure, if I had stayed with him, I wouldn’t have married Clueless. I wouldn’t have my wonderful two kids. I wouldn’t be unemployed and miserable. Life has so many variables. One swish of the air in the wrong direction and you’re kissing the pavement. But neither of us was in the right place when we were together.
Life continues. Even without him, it’s still moving forward. Blink and you’ll miss something important, something special. His daughter is in drill team now. His mother plays golf. Their lives didn’t stop with 9/11. Whether they wanted it to or not, life kept going.
That’s what I need to remember these days. My ex’s mother and his daughter kept going after they lost a part of their family. If they can do that, if they can bounce back after that, then I should be able to bounce back from my problems too.
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