I looked at the clock..
3:45 am and yet not a minute of sleep.
Although I had gulped down another two pain-
killers, my head was still pounding.
It was eerily quiet bar from my thumping heart
and blistering headache as I kept staring at the ceiling.
I had to get up.
I got out of bed and walked in to
my son's empty bedroom and laid down on his
bed. Laying down on my son's bed, the ''absence'';
the absence of my son, of my partner, of my home
and of my life felt so crushing that I found it hard to
even breathe.
But although I felt as if I was dying, I had to find
some kind of inner strength and pull myself
together. I had to be strong for my son.
-How? How do you pull yourself together when
you're mere pixels strewn all over the floor?
How do you pull yourself together when you feel
betrayed, ripped apart, walked all over and
discarded like a ticket stub?
With those thoughts on replay, eventually grief and
sadness overcame my inability to sleep so
finally I fell asleep.
A few hours later I woke up, got out of my
son's bed and straight into a cold shower.
Although the cold water helped some,
my head was still pounding and knowing
what was on the agenda for the day
made me feel awfully nauseous.
Standing in front of the mirror getting
dressed I was surprised to see that
looking back at me........was a ''whole''
person not a big, open, oozing wound.
Huh. My ''front'' was holding.
Maybe I was going to be able to
deal with it after all.
-Hop in, said David when he picked me up.
-I have the worst headache, I said as I hopped
in his car.
-Understandable. What you are going to have to
do is heart-wrenching. Believe me, I know.
I've been there too.
-Thanks David, I am really dreading it. Thanks
for coming with me.
When we arrived in the city we were lucky and
found a parking spot almost immediately.
The walk to the court house would be short.
However, my head was aching so badly that I was
worried that I was going to end up with
my head stuck in a lavatory dry-heaving
and unable to speak.
-David, stop. I need some water quickly.
Can you get me some, please, I said and sat
down on my haunches in the shade from a leafy tree.
Holding my head in my hands I told myself:
I can do this, I can do this.
-Here. Drink as much as you can, David said
as he handed me a bottle of water.
The water made me feel a bit better
so we kept walking.
When we reached the court house
David decided to wait in the entrance.
This meant that when I stepped in to the court
room I once again had to face one of my
absolute worst moments of life
.................alone.
The judge asked me to stand up,
he asked a question, and then ........
just like that.......I was divorced.
15 years of what had been my
family, my home, my place of
belonging..............gone.
As I stepped out of the court room
I thought to myself: Above the parapet....
does the sun shine, do the birds sing,
and does time really heal everything?
*
Splitting up. Breaking up. Divorcing.
Parting. Severing. Annul.
''Breaking up'' is something that most of us
will probably go through at least once in our lives.
Some say that the person who is the
''breaker-upper'' usually experiences less
pain than the person ''broken-up'' with.
Is that however really true? And.....by the way,
how does one measure emotional pain?
Any kind of pain? Is not the level of pain
we experience in the ''heart/mind'' of the beholder?
(We have something called mirror-neurons in
our brains that fires up (automatically) when
we watch someone going through something
that we ourselves have experienced.
Like watching someone cry, yawn, laugh, etc. etc.
We can't help it, we just feel what we see the
other feel.)
So how long does it take to get over a divorce,
a break-up and or split?
My own opinion is that it takes as long as
it takes.
Grief, or the hurt from a split, or the loss of
any valued relationship, in my view is experienced
differently by us all.
Telling somebody to ''just get over it'' as I
see it, is disrespectful as well as hurtful.
So is ''time to move on'', or ''you're better off''
or ''time to let go''.(Or drunken rebound liaisons.)
''Getting over any painful experience is not
a straight forward trajectory, it is not time limited,
neither can it be pushed, rushed or crushed.
But whether you will go through it alone
or not, ..... that is optional.''
(Citizen Z)
about the image: Acrylic on canvas title: ''Pain''
