If Only I Knew

I am not sure what to do with all the knowledge I have acquired since your death. Oh how deep my love for your is. How the smell and feel of you is imprinted on my very soul. How I miss the feel of my head on your chest, your hands through my hair, your breath on my neck. I miss meeting you at the step for a kiss goodbye, goodnight, or just a hello.

It is you that I miss . . . not him. I enjoy the natural feel I have with him. It reminds me of the days in our marriage when just being together doing nothing was easy. Before the bouts of depression, and cycles of addiction and emotional abuse. I like laughing with him and playfully teasing, it reminds me of how fun being married can be.

But I could not marry him, even if he wanted to, because that is all there is to him. He filled what you had forgotten to fill on a regular basis these last few years. And I liked that. I really liked that.

But truth is, he would never love me like you did. He just doesn't seem the type. Seldom was there a deep conversation and I think he hardly knows me. Emotionally, there was just a void.

I wish I knew whether I will ever be loved like you once loved me. I would know whether I am being practical or impractical. I am not looking for another "you," but I want someone who loves me madly. I am baffled at the envy that people have, even knowing the hell you put me through. And in some ways that angers me. How could your love be so grand, and so deep, yet you brought upon me so much pain. . . not in your death, but in our life together? How? How can it be that one could love and hate me so intensly?

I am confused, and I don't understand where eternity stands with us. I feel like I lost you so very long ago. I read through my journals and the letters I wrote you and I can hear and see the pleadings I made to you to give me back my soul. I begged you to stop the madness that was killing me. Literally and figuratively killing me. Yet you just couldn't. And you just wouldn't let me go. Why didn't you just let me go? Did you not love me enough to realize that I had to be set free in order to live? Or was this a let go, and let God, and it was God who finally did what you wouldn't.

Your boys had their first games without you. It was hard for me. Asher had his first soccer game - ever, you missed it, or rather, I missed you there. I had to run in circles getting both boys where they were supposed to be and missed part of Gavyn's game. It's hard to be the only parent and have the kids miss things because I just can't do it all. I diplomatically gave the coaches an ass chewing. You would be proud of me.

I miss you, the long ago you. I miss that you.