That Hard, Bizarre Thing #39 of 45: “Gone Girl”

(NOTE: Written about an experience in the past, does NOT reflect the present.)

Girl and I became sort of… friends while you were gone? I think?

Girl was supposed to come over on Wednesday after you got back. She was supposed to celebrate our kid’s birthday with us, we were going to play Boggle and Bananagrams and the 10-second drawing game.

Girl and I were supposed to go shopping for dresses, so I could help her be extra beautiful for important functions. 

But on Saturday Girl disappeared.

Then on Monday she wrote us two bizarre texts cutting us from her life.

And of course I wrote her a final love letter in return, waxing poetic about how she changed our lives, how she is worthy and deserving, how she is loved unconditionally, how we will always be here for her, how she set us free. I even thanked her for ending it with you. The savior and mother part of me poured out strong.

Now here I sit, in the quiet. It is surreal, it is bizarre, I am changed but it also feels like it was a dream. The past few months that felt like ten years, the endless heartache, chaos, pain, and reeling that filled my days, gone. And in its place, just quiet.

Girl is gone, but not gone. She exists, but the vortex that felt like it was swallowing me whole disappeared. It feels like a great storm came and shook our household, shook our existences like a snowglobe, sending us tumbling, careening, struggling to catch our breath, stumbling to right ourselves, efforting just to catch glimpses of reality through the snow.

The storm appeared in an instant, seemingly out of nowhere, and left in the very same way. In the blink of an eye, without a single snowflake remaining to tell its tale. The house is no longer shaking, her smell no longer lingers in our car, there are no strands of her hair on our floor, and I wonder if she was ever here at all? This force, this catalyst, this blood-pumping being, was she ever before us? Was it real? Was any of it real? And where do we go from here?