Sun in Clouds, Spring 2016. I was smoking a cigarette in the garage this morning, sitting on my Grandmother's sofa, talking to my Mom on the telephone, when my Dad appeared at the door as expected every morning. He had a letter in his hand. I got up to get it and I could not believe it. It was a letter from my former Father in Law. It was small and handwritten, and I just looked at it as if it had come from outer space, or certainly a stranger. It has just been such a long, long time. It was so lovely to receive this letter. I wrote him a few weeks ago, and had written occasionally over the years since the divorce, just because I loved my former husband's family so much and I wanted to let him know that I still loved him so much and had so many lovely memories. It was a brief note on a scrap of paper saying that he was glad I was feeling better and he included 45 pounds sterling. It was just really really touching and entirely unexpected and has given me a feeling of such delicate happiness. I never thought I would hear from him again and I had guessed he wasn't even opening my letters. So this is a quiet lovely moment. I'm just kind of finally at a loss for words with them, my ex's father, and I feel I can finally rest my pen. He understands. I even had tears in my eyes and I haven't cried in nearly 20 years.
I haven't painted again yet. I have been working really hard with my voices, hours, days and more than a week just talking, explaining, reasoning. I find it very hard to be forced to put into words, into thin air, what I'm really thinking and feeling. It's as if I am talking to someone who should already know, since there is no one there to hear me. It's extremely hard work. I have a top line on my marriage, and that is, it was blissful and happy and worth every second of my time. But these talks were more comprehensive. My voice said I had been codependent, which is a well known term and over the years I had googled but I didn't find a definition that resonated with me until yesterday. Sure, I was codependent. But I was codependent with myself. I wasn't bringing out my best qualities because I was insecure and nervous. Also ambitious. It was also that we didn't talk about important issues, money - we had plenty, but he earned like 8 times what I earned and I didn't know that, so I could not ever figure out if we could afford children and when. Which is another thing we could have easily discussed. I think we were just so in love and kind of in some kind of suspended disbelief of our own happiness at having found each other, and that discussing ordinary, practical things was not part of that overriding charm and enchantment. We simply skipped over it, and so speaking for myself, I didn't even know I should bring these things up. They were just things I perpetually wondered about while being otherwise blissfully happy. He's a lovely human being and I am truly thankful. But yeah, we should have talked. I think sometimes about what might have happened if things had been different and I remember a couple of moments when all would have been forgiven and we could have gone on, the rift would have just quietly closed. But I made other choices in those moments, choices I can't really explain or even understand myself. I kind of ruined my own life with these decisions and I did it purposefully. I think I'll never know exactly why, but I have a kind of peace now that I have never known before and a kind of happiness, but it's an entirely different color and texture to the happiness I had when I was married, which was kind of amplified and certainly vibrant, but kind of also a low-level anxiety. Like, I wondered how long we could keep the ball in the air. Now the ball rolls across the lawn to my feet every morning as I sit on the steps in the morning. It's nice. But sure, I remember his smile, I remember perfect sleep with no dreams, I remember the warmth of his hand as it took mine when we fell asleep every night. And I smile.
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