Seeing what I find
Reflections on heartbreak, one year later.
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It’s February vacation week here, and for the past three years, I’d gone away with my ex to Mexico. My daughter typically went skiing with her dad, which gave us a good excuse to take off somewhere warm.
Last year on that trip, things fell apart. A week later, I moved out.
When I think back to those first weeks afterward, I feel cold—not from the weather, but the adrenaline. I was in shock.
The shock was a gift. It provided enough energy and focus and remove from the emotional reality of the situation to get me and my daughter moved and for me to set up our new place enough so that at least she wouldn’t feel much difference in the day-to-day. I remember hauling two nearly 100 pound IKEA boxes into our new house one day—Alma needed a dresser; the old one wouldn’t fit up our tiny, winding staircase, and she wanted a vanity, and I wanted to give that to her—and putting them together late into the evening. Separating the hundreds of parts: screws, knobs, dowels, legs, shelf pins, hinges on the bare wooden floor and following the directions step-by-step gave me something manageable to do.
The shock also let me feel, for a short time, that I was going to be fine.
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