There’s a strange phenomenon taking place in my house. It’s not a huge place. We always thought it was the perfect size, for two, and possibly a third. But I just realized, as I went upstairs to my office, that I hadn’t been up there in days. Maybe even weeks. It almost felt like I was walking into a stranger’s office…a half empty mug of coffee, dried up and hardened on the table, papers here and there, a poster had started curling off the wall. It looked abandoned. Un-lived in. Un-loved. It would seem that I’m only living in half of the house.
And then there’s the matter of the old calendar, stuck and spooling in the month of December. I can’t bring myself to take it down. While I know I should be kind and patient with myself, I can’t help but wonder about me, and my life, circling around in the twilight zone of last year. In this house, where rooms are half empty, half clean, a mess of his stuff and mine, some things have been moved, to accommodate some semblance of future as a single dweller, and some things, like the little bowl with two pills (one of the last things my husband touched) are practically cemented in place. Relics of another time.
bedraggled & kicking 