Until now

It’s in my stomach now. It started in my chest, like a small earthquake that sent waves of nausea into the rest of me. Now all that remains in my chest is ache. If it had a sound, it would be the high-pitched moan of wood under all the weight it could bear. The center of the pain is right where my heart lies on my diaphragm. Every breath feels like lung tissue dragged across a diamond file. Breathing slow helps a little; keeps me from throwing up.

I’m trying to keep an eye on it. It’s just a feeling. I can’t put my hands around it, yet it hurts as if a dagger were sticking out of my sternum. But there’s no knife. There’s nothing to pull out, staunch or stitch up. There are just waves of ache that won’t stop. There’s nothing to be done. I can’t get away. I can’t cry it out through my eyes. I can’t exhaust myself enough. I can’t drink it back into a corner. I have to let this take up residence in my heart as long as it wills. I have no defenses. Every single step in grief. All the grief I never had time for, that I couldn’t possibly allow. Because I had to work. To live, to study, make a living, clean the house, change the oil, do the dishes, pay the rent, call the doctor, buy the groceries, take out a loan, pay off a loan, pick tomatoes, feed the dogs, sort the recycling, brush my teeth and get out of bed. Grief is a luxury, a self-indulgence. A conceit. I heard. Move and drink and force my way through life. But never cry the heaving sobs of everything that ever was.

Until now.

Just a little note. A quiet note, a small and innocent note. Going to Baghdad for a year. My divorce is final from you. I can’t live with you. I’m not right with you. I can’t be with you, but for years I’ve haven’t been more than a block from you. My big hope, my great white hope, my very last fairy tale, of which there are no more. No husband, no family, no home. No how was your day let me take your coat. No vacations for two. There is a cup of tea before bed. Some words on paper and a silent phone. A great gaping wound where once, for just a minute, my heart was filled.

I made the divorce. You made Baghdad.

Touché.

I don’t know what I expected, but not this. Not to be brought to my knees. Down to skin and bones and blood and breath because all else is imagined anyway. Just a body and a throbbing searing ache. Baghdad, the doorway of my holocaust. The cold orphanage floor. Hostile, troubled strangers whose love was completely locked away. Passing in and out of lives but never staying, and then they’re gone forever. Every tear I never cried was summoned by Baghdad. You have reduced me. Unraveled me into a wad of thread. You will spend a year in a danger zone and I’ll pray every day for your safety. I’ll spend a year completely exposed to my feelings knowing the thing I perceive myself to be has no chance of survival.

I don’t know what it looks like. The other side of a year. But I won’t be who I am right now, and neither will you.

May you be at peace. May you be free from suffering. May you know your greatest joy.

And so may I.

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Copyright 2010 by Deborah McAdams. All Rights Reserved. For Reprint Rights, click here.