![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I went to Ikea yesterday. Blue Beard and Too Busy were supposed to come with, but they fell asleep after the all nighter BB & I pulled. I ended up wandering through there alone, which had been my original intention.
While talking to BB, he and I finally got around to telling each other our Sad Stories. I realized, later, that it was the first time I'd let it all out in one big long story like that. The last three years of my life, everything. The slow demise of the relationship, meeting Roo and all the nitty-gritty details that make that period so particularly bizarre, moving in with Unsilent Spectator. The long nights alone for the first time in my life, meeting (f)AD, that entire relationship, the fight Roo and I had and the intervening months of silence. Fighting with (f)AD about my choice to move to Chicago without her. Running into the dodgeball folks at Saturnalia and being introduced to the rest of everyone here. Building a new life, Roo calling me again, struggling to stay friends with (f)AD, just everything all the way up to the present day.
Wow. It's been a long three years.
Anyway, with all that stuff brought back to the surface, I guess it was no surprise that I could feel My Ex walking alongside me through the Ikea. Her absence hasn't been so forcibly present since the first time I went to a mall here in Chicago, nearly a year ago. I kept forgetting that I wasn't there to buy stuff for Arrakis, kept forgetting that her tastes no longer mattered to me. Every time I came back to the present, there was this gut-wrenching pain that started in my stomache and made my knees unsteady. There was another shopper by herself, an older woman maybe in her 40s, and I think she recognized what I was going through. She kept pace with me, and kept trying to start conversations with me about various pieces. Which I was fine with, until we got to the Pax Videkal. It was too much, and I just ran through the rest of the store, arrow-straight to the three things I'd gone there to pick up.
When I got back into Maggie, after I'd wrestled everything into the back seat, I had this weird epiphany. My life lately has not been consumed with thoughts of My Ex. I can't remember the last time I suddenly found myself in a screaming argument with phantoms. I think there may even have been several days in the last few weeks that I didn't think of her even once. I have been healing, and far faster than I ever suspected I would.
Hey, look, Cheryl. I'm standing in the shade.
Look, Roo, I've taken off my shoes.
Look, Angel. See me smile?
( To Do )
While talking to BB, he and I finally got around to telling each other our Sad Stories. I realized, later, that it was the first time I'd let it all out in one big long story like that. The last three years of my life, everything. The slow demise of the relationship, meeting Roo and all the nitty-gritty details that make that period so particularly bizarre, moving in with Unsilent Spectator. The long nights alone for the first time in my life, meeting (f)AD, that entire relationship, the fight Roo and I had and the intervening months of silence. Fighting with (f)AD about my choice to move to Chicago without her. Running into the dodgeball folks at Saturnalia and being introduced to the rest of everyone here. Building a new life, Roo calling me again, struggling to stay friends with (f)AD, just everything all the way up to the present day.
Wow. It's been a long three years.
Anyway, with all that stuff brought back to the surface, I guess it was no surprise that I could feel My Ex walking alongside me through the Ikea. Her absence hasn't been so forcibly present since the first time I went to a mall here in Chicago, nearly a year ago. I kept forgetting that I wasn't there to buy stuff for Arrakis, kept forgetting that her tastes no longer mattered to me. Every time I came back to the present, there was this gut-wrenching pain that started in my stomache and made my knees unsteady. There was another shopper by herself, an older woman maybe in her 40s, and I think she recognized what I was going through. She kept pace with me, and kept trying to start conversations with me about various pieces. Which I was fine with, until we got to the Pax Videkal. It was too much, and I just ran through the rest of the store, arrow-straight to the three things I'd gone there to pick up.
When I got back into Maggie, after I'd wrestled everything into the back seat, I had this weird epiphany. My life lately has not been consumed with thoughts of My Ex. I can't remember the last time I suddenly found myself in a screaming argument with phantoms. I think there may even have been several days in the last few weeks that I didn't think of her even once. I have been healing, and far faster than I ever suspected I would.
Hey, look, Cheryl. I'm standing in the shade.
Look, Roo, I've taken off my shoes.
Look, Angel. See me smile?
( To Do )
