A new road

I’m drunk. It occurs to me on the cab ride home, hurtling down dead dark, that there’s a new life stretching ahead of me, and I’m eager to meet it.

I’ve deleted him from FB. I’ve ignored his request to stay for dinner. I’ve done my best to ignore his mentions of dates. I’m doing what I can to minimize contact. I’m (sorta) seeing a guy who, while not my physical type, makes me feel heavenly when I’m with him, telling me all the things I haven’t ever heard. I doubt it will last, but damn, seeing someone look at you, TRULY look at you and tell you you’re lovely and amazing…it’s been far too long.

It stuns me that after only a couple dates, a man is telling me all the things my husband never said in over 10 years of marriage. That a man I barely know can run a hand down my leg and tell me how lovely he finds them, even while I protest and try to keep his hand away from the cellulite lurking under my tights.  It stuns me that such simple kindness, words that may just be words, and may be more, they make me want to cry because it’s all I’ve ever wanted to hear, in years of marriage-that I was worthy, and lovely and amazing in someone’s eyes. That I mattered, that I was wanted.

It infuriates me that I always felt like I was asking too much. It saddens me that someone saying such beautiful things nearly made me cry. It angers me, that I just sat in a dead relationship for so long, that we both did. And it makes me shake my head, knowing I’d never let my daughters stay in a corner like that.

Everyone tells me I have a new life coming-and I do. It happens slowly, as I take a look ahead and see no horizon and know that it’s so very true, that with my heart and mind open, I can become that frantically happy woman I want to be. I can whistle into the wind and strike up a conversation where I wish. I can be happy in my own skin.

The counselor stressed that. Find my happy first. Then look out. And I will.

But nothing else this year will make me as happy as someone describing my skin as silk as he gently caressed my arm. Nothing can take that from me-no matter how angry my ex can make me, no matter how futile it all seems somedays, as yet another separation related tantrum starts-no one can take away the fact that I am still wanted, by myself, and by others.

Even drunk, one too many vodka and orange later, I know that being reflected in someone else’s eyes is just as important to me as being reflected in my own. And I’m good with that.

A new life, a new road. Tempered by anger, polished by my need to love.

It will all be ok.

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