The things I miss

I went over to my old house the day before yesterday. My husband is moving out and he still has a bunch of my stuff that I figured I would have time to sort through eventually - but I never got to it. The place is full of boxes (some of them with my unsorted stuff), and I found myself wandering from room to room, opening up empty closets, looking inside all the cupboards and drawers. I told myself I just wanted to make sure he wasn't leaving anything behind, but in reality I was wandering around the rooms of that house - our house - and saying goodbye.

I was upstairs in the second floor bathroom looking at the empty linen closet when I suddenly burst into tears and began sobbing uncontrollably. I had spent an entire afternoon organizing that closet. Giving the extra soap, shampoo and towels a proper place. Arranging makeup and vitamins, and talcum powder. Taking a space and making it mine. Making it ours. Making a house into a home. Now that home was being packed up and it was just a house again. A house for someone else to make theirs.

I know its silly to hold onto a "place". It's just a house. But when we moved there it was supposed to be a fresh start - a new beginning - a chance to be happy. I pictured us grilling in the backyard, planting a garden in the spring, lying in the hammock I bought in Key West and taking mid-afternoon naps. I created a guest room on the third floor where I envisioned friends and family would come and stay - an office where I could write -and a space that might one day become a nursery. That house was a symbol of a dream I had for my life, and now that dream was being stripped bare, disassembled and packed into boxes.

I insisted on taking a few things right then and there- things I didn't really have to have at 10pm on a weeknight. Stuff like the printer, and a paper shredder and an ergonomic stool from Relax The Back store that I bought when I threw my back out and couldn't sit in any normal chair without pain. My husband helped me put them in the car, even though I could tell he was iritated that I suddenly felt I had to do this "right now." I think he knew I was cracking.

The whole thing made me realize how incredibly lonely I am, and how the hardest part of this is letting my dreams die. Letting go of the plans I had made for us and for our lives. There would be no happy afternoons lounging in that backyard hammock. No repainting the spare room for a new baby. No thanksgiving dinner gathered around the dining room table followed by a walk in the park with the dogs.

"This isn't how I wanted my life to be" I once sobbed to my be best friend Stephanie in Boston over the phone. My husband and I had just returned from the neighborhood block party, and hours before I had signed the lease on my new apartment. It was official, we were going our separate ways. But we decided to put in an appearance at the party anyway, and midway through I had to leave. I simply couldn't take it. The group was filled with young married couples who were all pregnant or chasing after young toddlers. The fathers played with the kids and the dogs and the moms chatted about this or that. And I watched the parents interact - working as a team - taking turns being on parental duty. Asking one another for another plate of potato salad or a beer, or could he please get little Michael's binky from the diaper bag? I sat watching these normal, happy interactions thinking "this will never be us."

My husaband was never happy. He didn't ever want to socialize or hang out with the neighbors, or have a beer with friends. Simple everyday chit chat was something he considered an imposition. He had become a loner, and he shut out even me. I could't even begin to imagine us laughing and playing with a child - me asking him for another diaper or toy and having him hoist the kid onto his shoulders to see the fire engine up close. I couldn't picture a happy family.

"I know," stephanie consoled me. "But you are moving on so that you can have those things. If you stay with him you know you never will, but by leaving, even though you'll be alone, even though it's hard, ther's a chance one day you might."

She is right of course. I knew it then. I know it now. But each time I am confronted with the broken dream I can't help but wish things could have somehow been different - and I ache with the need to make them so.

Do I miss my husband? Every day. But what I really miss is the way we used to be, long ago when we fell in love and decided to get married. I miss the person who used to be excited about hearing about my day, who used to take long walks with me on summer nights, who would drive the the beach with me on a moments notice and stay there all day in the sun getting tan and hungry before finding some seaside restaruant for dinner. I miss the nights we used to go get enormous amounts of sushi with from the cheap restaraunt across the street from our old Boston apartment and eat it on the living room floor while watching masterpiece theatre on PBS because we didn't have cable. I miss walking to Trader Joes and buying as much as we could carry - olives stuffed with blue cheese, proscuitto, goat cheese, fresh figs, wine, shrimp...and having our own personal anti-pasto with a VHS movie from the run-down neighborhood video store. I miss the way he used to rub my back with baby powder when I was sleeping until I would wake up to him caressing me gently, tenderly.

I miss all of that . All the things that made me choose him as my partner in life. All the things that made me think I would want to wake up to him every day. That together we would read bedtime stories and take vacations, and make a family full of happy memories. I miss it so much it hurts.

But missing something doesn't bring it back to life. Of course, sometimes I find myself wondering if we might not be able to revive things. Reconcile and go back to those happier times. I'm not sure. Perhaps I'm just lonely right now and mourning the death of those dreams. Maybe I'm just feeling uncertain that i'll ever find that dream again with someone else. Maybe he really will never be able to be that person that I need, and in order to have those things, I have to look elsewhere. But maybe he'll change.

I miss him. But I don't want to miss out on the rest of my life. I don't want to miss out on a family - a partner - a lover - a dream. I missed him even when we were still married - because he was already absent from my life in so many ways. And now metaphorically speaking, the things I miss are getting packed away - and the rooms of my heart are empty and filled with boxes.