I've been away.

 I've been away a lot lately: away physically, away emotionally. Away as myself. So much has crushed me in the last 2 years. It's a huge list: my career, my 'person', my house, my aging body, my country....just...everything. I've been dead inside for what seems like an eternity. 

I just came from my house. My beautiful house that I no longer live in, because I can't afford it. When I'm there I still feel safe and I know how all the dings and dents came to be. I know its secrets and its tales. I raised my beautiful children there; experienced triumphs and defeats there. All of us. Sometimes my house revives my dead insides, like today. Today it gave me big feelings. I had to turn off the radio on the way back to my "rental home" because my mind was full of what could have been. 

 Hanukkah starts tonight. I should be baking or frying or cleaning or something festive-like. I helped get some of the decorations out of the Hanukkah tote in advance of next Sunday's family get-together. I counted the kids' gifts. (Do they have enough to unwrap? Does someone have more than someone else?) The 28-year-old hanukkiah that plays Rock of Ages in the little music box under the base needed cleaned. I guess it was put away last year with candle wax still on it. Last year was a blur. We were a newly broken family last year. Thinking about it gives me tears -I think I'd rather be dead inside. 

I can't suss out the separation between the betrayal of my aging body and the betrayal of love by my lover.  Either way, I don't get a break. Emotionally, it is a violent journey, having to remake myself so I can come out on the other side alive. Sometimes I wake up and feel longing for my lost love. I think I can overcome and run home and make it work. Upon arrival, though, real life rushes back and the meter of feelings falls like a depleting battery. In my case, love just doesn't stop. It ebbs and flows, slowly farther and farther away. Tears pour in, or out, as the case may be. I want it back -I just...can't. I can't feel like this and live. I can't bombard someone else with the same ugly conversation day in and day out about how we should be selling our beautiful house to move to the next beautiful property with acreage. About what trip we can take with our new cache of spending money since we only have 1 kid in college. I just can't. So I sleep and wake up and want to run home and make it work. And then when I arrive, the hurt snuffs out the feelings. It's a bad record on repeat. Over and over. When does that end?? I just...can't.

So, I've been away because I'm trying to be someone else. A new job. A new place. A new sad lonely existence. I'm embarrassed to be in this position: a loser, a jilted old woman. I grew up under the philosophy that 'what goes around, comes around.' 'You make your bed and you lay in it.' I dedicated myself to my family and my career. My family always came first and my career after, but I was still dedicated to education. I can't figure it out. I remember the book title "When Bad Things Happen to Good People" and I wonder if my upbringing has betrayed me, too. Because I'm astray, I just stay away.