Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets.
Once upon a time, there was a different version of me. I flash back to a year ago, and think about my apartment before he was home. There were lots of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on store-brand bread, a usual bedtime of one in the morning, loud music, and a room so unbearably hot I spent most of the time in a tank top and underwear. This SSB (or Secret Single Behavior for you non-Sex and the City fans, and part of my all-time favorite episode) was pumped up drastically during the months he was gone.
Now, he is away once a month for drill weekends with the Guard. This is a particularly long one (Wednesday through Sunday), particularly far away (somewhere into Kentucky). I've gotten used to them for the most part, and try to live it up while he's gone so I don't miss him too much. A lot of things don't change at all. But I'm blogging from bed, like I used to do. I watch TV sporadically, flipping channels often or stopping to pick up a magazine. I shower with the door open. I clean up the place, scooping up his clothes from the floor on his side of the bed, and dumping them in the laundry room. I listen to music a lot. I sing along loudly, and I never sing in front of him. I spend a good deal of time online shopping for purses, only to decide I hate all of them. And, something he doesn't know- I wear his dogtags from the time I wake up until I turn off the lights. I'm not usually like this (see prior post), but something about wearing them when he's gone just feels right.
The thing is, several versions of me have lived on this earth since I was first born. There are many types of girls I thought I wanted to be or tried to be, only to realize the fit was not right. And though it's fun in a way to rewind and remember all the crazy things I did, all the places I've been, all the scenarios I imagined, the truth is that I have never felt more genuinely myself until now. He has a tendency of bringing out in me just that- me. I have lived so many variations that it feels amazing to be at home now.
I wonder occasionally what it would be like, living the life I imagined I would- the girl in dark clothes, sipping a latte and typing away on a laptop at a quaint coffee shop downtown somewhere. It feels glamorous and delicious-and maybe someday, that part will still happen- but the picture is so flat without him in it. Even in imaginary worlds and lives, that girl knows she needs someone holding her hand across the table, softly singing a Frank Sinatra song if she begins to look too serious.
She wouldn't be the same without it.
0 kind comments from you:
Post a Comment