Two Years Ago...

So, as I was in the shower, I realized that a two years on November 1, I met CA on a plane. I'd been thinking about that all day, looking for a nice card, something to give him while we were in Georgia. Really, I've been thinking about our anniversary for a long time, if you take into account the fact that I had scrapbooked since like July to get ready for it.

But, until one weird moment in the shower, when I remembered why I was flying home, did it even enter into my head that two years ago today, I received the letter from he-who-shall-no-longer-be-named that told me he was, "Confused about what we were doing," and, "thought he'd been leading me astray for the past five years." I remember how indignant and mystified I was at the time. And how terrified. Not that I'd lost him, but that there would never be anyone else.

I had known it wasn't good for a long time, years, really, if I was being honest with myself. I knew it wasn't a fun relationship. I knew I wasn't laughing enough (or, most of the time, at all.) I knew that there were things that I had deeply cared about, that I was losing. But, there was that huge part of me that didn't know how to be alone.

And so I got on that plane, ready to come home and try to get him to take me back. I got on that plane because I thought it was my only option. I got OFF that plane wondering if I didn't need to be that clingy type of a person anymore. And two years later, I'm realizing how little of myself was left and how lucky I am that, before November 1 happened, October 30 happened. It's funny, how it seemed so monumental then and now, I'm forgetting the things that had seemed so ingrained--phone numbers, birthdays, important events.

Like that saying of Hemingways goes, "All things, good and bad, leave an emptiness when gone. If the thing was bad, the emptiness fills up on its own. If it was good, it take something better to fill it."

Lucky for me, the emptiness had a year to go away on its own in Beantown. And by the time I came back, I was fully ready for something, someone, better to fill it up.