90 Day Chip

It's been 90 days.

Yes, I'm counting.

Some people don't get that, but I had no recourse, no way to navigate through the fog called grief.  And somewhere in the clouded visions of my mind I remembered someone calling Love an addiction and so, in the midst of my misery, I decided that if Love was an addiction then I needed to count my days through withdrawal and keep track of my recovery and well, here we are:

I don't know what to say, really.  If you know me, if you were lucky enough to truly know "us,"  if you know what I went through here, you would know that I don't truly have the first clue what to think or say about of any of this (regardless of the jaded jokes I may make about it at this point in a further and more developed attempt to survive).

On day one, after no sleep, I got up out of the pointless bed and poured myself a cup of coffee and called my family and told them that I wasn't getting married.  I then pulled myself together long enough to go find a place to live because my lease was up and I had nowhere to go.  I came home and wrote my own phone number and address on a piece of paper in front of me so that I could remember what I needed to tell the moving company when I scheduled them to go pick up my things from his house, and I then I called my friends to tell them I wasn't getting married and I needed a group of people to help me move what was left in my hovel over to my new apartment and after I got all of that done... I lost it.

On day two I pretty much stared at the wall even though I was supposed to pack up the rest of my apartment.  At some point my "matron of honor" showed up and packed up the rest of my place.

On day three I pulled myself together enough to get to work and told myself that even I sat there like a zombie, at least I was there.

On day four my daughter fell apart and the rest of the week was a wash.

On day six, when I was supposed to get married, my friends came and moved things out of my apartment and the movers came and brought my things over from his place.

On day seven, the day after what was supposed to be my wedding, my family, some of which had flown out from out of state, came to my new apartment to bring me wedding gifts that they now called house warming gifts, and toured through my new apartment trying to be as positive as they could be and all I could do was look at my brother and say, "I know what they're trying to do, but I can't help it... I'm not supposed to be here right now."  And all he could do was nod at me in silent recognition of the emotional hell I was in because he's my brother and knows me better than anyone and he's the best person I know and pretty much the only person I really wanted to see that day.

On day eight I couldn't get to work.  I woke up and promptly fell to pieces and called my secretary and told her I just couldn't get there and then I went back to bed.  Around 11:00 a.m. she messaged me and said, "At least get up and unpack your boxes."  She was right.  I got up and unpacked my office because that's my sacred space and I at least needed to make that place happen.

Between day 8 and day 29 I got up and functioned.  I got up and went to work and explained repeatedly that I didn't have a honeymoon because I had been dumped by the dumpster.  And I was thankful for all of the meetings that usually stress me out and frustrate the hell out of me because at least they forced me outside of my own head, but somewhere between the office and home I would sink back into hell and there was no stopping it.

By day 30 someone asked me how I was doing and I said, "I went to bed crying and I woke up crying.  I feel like someone sapped my A Game and I have no clue how to get it back, and in the mean time the B team is running with the ball but they keep dropping it and they're fouling all over the place."

By day 32 I received a phone call from my daughter's teacher saying she wasn't doing well and I checked her grades and I fell to pieces because I knew it was my fault, because I knew her performance was directly related to my own and well... we were failing.  So I sucked it up and I pulled myself together and I pulled her together and we spent three nights making up work and sleeping very little but we still came out on top because that's how we roll.  Shit gets ugly sometimes but if you don't keep moving with life it's going to move on without you and well... that's just unacceptable so... shame on me for letting it get down that far but I'll be damned if I let that happen again.

And somewhere between day 32 and day 60 I was haunted by crazy nightmares where my subconscious either replayed the event over and over again or I was following him around picking up pieces of things he dropped behind him and begging him not to do this.

Somewhere around day 61 my nightmares shifted to him begging me to come back to him and me saying no.

Somewhere around day 65 a friend of mine went out of town and we baby-sat her dog and that was the best weekend we'd had in 65 days.  That doggy was the brightest piece of joy we'd had in quite some time and so by day 67 we decided to adopt our own doggy, Charity, because we needed a sweet little happy thing bouncing around our new home to remind us that life isn't all that bad.

Somewhere around day 72 a gentleman from a group of friends I know creatively took me off guard and asked me out on a date and I said yes even though I didn't really want to.

On day 73 I convinced myself that I should at least go on the date and let the man take me to dinner and help me remember that I'm pretty and intelligent and worth being around because my confidence was completely shot.

On day 75 I found myself telling this man that had started texting me and calling me as though he were already my boyfriend that I was far from ready and I remembered why I hated dating and I fell back into some pit where I hated my man for leaving me in this stupid space.

And somewhere between day 75 and now I looked at my daughter and said, "I think I need to resurrect Pandora."  And she said, "Yes, you do.  She's a strong woman, Pandora, and right now I think we need her."

And somewhere between 75 and 80 something I brought Pandora back and it felt like the best moment I've had in a long  long time because I remembered a bit more of who I was before all this shit went down.  And somewhere in my head I remembered someone saying, "You don't need him, you just want him.  You never needed him, you lived a long time without him, you'll be fine.  Just get over the hurt and remember who you are."

And in day 87 someone said to me, "What do you need to do to get your A Game back?"  And I said, "The first step is writing."  And here I am, best player on the A Team making her appearance.

And on day 90 I want to take a moment to say the following:

I loved that man, not in the shallow way that most people toss that word around, but in the way in which I truly believed I was going to look into his eyes until I was too blind to see.  I was going to be with him until my singing voice made people wish I'd realize how old I was and sit down.  I was going to be with him until my body was too crippled to move.  I was going to be with him until I breathed my last breath.  He was not bad to me, he has some strange hang up that ripped the carpet right out from under all three of us because I apparently was too love struck to see it coming but... please don't tell me I'm better off.  I may be, but I have yet to have that moment of breathing a sigh of relief because I dodged some kind of bullet.  Most of the time I sit here and say to myself, "If he's that fucked in the head, then yes... I can see that this may be best, but the past three years with the man tell me otherwise and this just doesn't make sense."  I had beautiful years with this person, I didn't see this coming and I do hope for his own sake he fixes his stupid ass crazy shit (if for no other reason than the fact that he's going to live one hell of a lonely ass hermit life if he doesn't).  And I do want to give a certain amount of props to the unique people who have said the following:

"I know you're hurting.  I want you to remember this: you did not pick a bad man, Pandora.  He was all the things you believed he was.  He is just a man with a blemish.  I'm sorry."

"We have no doubt that he loved you, but you were obviously a trigger for something he needs to come to terms with."

"We know you, we watched you, we all believed this was perfect..."

"We're going to be okay, Mom.  We're going to be okay without him.  He's not going to be okay without us, but we're going to be okay without him.  I promise."

"It's just a speed bump, Pandora.  ...just a speed bump in the road."

My name is Pandora.  I've successfully completed 90 days of rejection recovery.

Now give me my damn chip!