mindful musings

I get it now. This weight, the sadness this thing that we’re all feeling is dying. It’s not a death but rather a divorce. From a marriage sure that wasn’t perfect, wasn’t happy. Wasn’t really the stuff of dreams but still it was ours, mine, yours. It was what we came home to from 10 days abroad. It was groceries on the table and dishes in the sink. It was familiar. And it had the potential to get better. It had the potential to be great. But now what we’re faced with is the reality that this thing that we thought was always under our feet came home one night and made a declaration that it wanted to do things differently, play by different rules. It wanted to follow its own discretion and not be bothered by what was fair or kind or just. It was selfish. It was cruel. The hardest part is the realization that we were in denial. We were never safe. We were never even happy. We were just comfortable. And now it’s not dying we cannot grieve it’s permanent loss. We still have to look at it across the courtroom, on the TV, Read it’s emails and fume. We were complicit. In fact we were the ones that strayed first by not paying closer attention, offering more compliments, respecting the other. As I think this I also think about how as I’m aging I am disappearing, slowly at first, and then all at once. My hair so thin, My flesh missing its fleshy bits. Even my vagina has given up. Receded in these dark times. A sexual organ that I never even knew that I had, my labia minora is gone and I miss it. I wished I had appreciated it more. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust is what they tell you but what they don’t say out loud is that that process happens right before your eyes. Skin becoming flaky and falling off in millimeter sized squares and circles. Lips no longer full enough for even a little bit of lipstick. No need to call attention to lines so thin. Encircling a mouth full of chipping teeth. What we had we didn’t know…what we had we didn’t want enough to protect. And now, well, now the future will be written in a foreign language that our grandchildren will speak from birth. There is no burial stone here just signed agreements in a court of law that doesn’t give a shit.