Instruction Manuals

No matter how calm, cool, and collected you are, how yogafied and blissed out, it is categorically weird to see your husband and his girlfriend at a party (please note, I'm not looking for pity, as I'm also dating). But despite me being cool on the outside and the inside, there's something strange about this part of saying goodbye. It's easy to fall into the, "He never did that for me!" or "I'm glad I never have to deal with that anymore," because I think it's quite painful to actually feel the sadness.

This sort of ending is very sad.

(Just ask the peanut butter jar and spatula next to me).

For some reason today I had the thought that I should pass along an instruction manual to the new girlfriend. Like I should give her a boost, a fighting chance, an opportunity to predict and subvert any difficulties I had to learn about from the start. Maybe I should include a family tree, along with the relatives to focus on (and those to be wary of)? Some hints about travel woes or favorite recipes? Highlight his best assets… he has amazingly beautiful hands- as in - he should be a hand model, if that's a thing. Keep pushing on that one, I'm pretty sure it's a gold mine.

Except that this isn't fair, is it? This is me intruding where I no longer belong. Trying to shine a light through a door that I closed. And what's the fun in that? Maybe there are other endearing things that I missed, and maybe there are habits I beat out of him (like PENS in the DRYER).

Apparently, this is not a concept I cooked up on my own. This idea of passing forwards with the torch must be intimately tied to the phase of the moon, or some fragrance floating through the nearly fall breeze, because the same thing happened to me this evening. A piece of his past handed me a note with whispers of foreboding. Foretelling things I may have discovered, and perhaps things I didn't want to know. Even though her intentions were more than honorable - kind and even friendly - they helped me decide that my husband's future partner(s) are on their own. Untainted by the lens through which I saw him.

I'll sit here, out in the outfield, a shadow of me with a shadow of who he was, fading into the history books.

And look forward to reading the next chapter.

"I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become." ~ Carl Jung