My key no longer turned the lock to the front door to our home. Motionless for a moment, I stood peering through the glass panes, into the space that served as my only semblance of a home since I moved to Philadelphia nearly eight years ago. The fading words of a conversation we once had found themselves in the back of my throat; in her heart-felt cool way, she assured me Marlyn Road was her house, but it was our home. But now, in what felt to be a life time later, I was being kept out.
Some may call it "breaking and entering"; I would like to consider it "by any means necessary", but I eventually found my way into the house, despite her calculated efforts to restrict me. With only the imaginary crooning of Bitter seeping through the cracks of the floor, I moved as a ghost from room to room, searching for some evidence of my existence there. I came up null.
The void on the kitchen wall, which once held obscure art she rummaged from a yard sale and gave me as a gift, was now blank and eagerly awaiting for her, or someone new, to fill its space. The top of the covered radiator which functioned as the place to dash unopened mail, until we were ready to deal with its contents, was free and clear of our unsorted proof that we once resided there. A single toothbrush rested in a new holder on the bathroom counter.
I returned to the garage where she made the effort to purge my "things" into haphazard trash bags and tilting towers of boxed books and pots. Among my possession was the shabby scarf I knitted for her 2 years ago. Later on, I found the Dr. Seuss Oh, the Places You'll Go mug I gave to her as part of an assignment (give a gift, just because) from The Love Dare book we began to work through in a grasping effort to resurrect what had perished between us at some point that we could never quit determine.
Saving only what would fit in my suitcase, and two bags to be shoved into my already overflowing storage unit, I lined the stone wall in front of her house with 8 bags of the things I was forced to leave behind. But more than the material possessions I was relinquishing, I was letting go of a life that no longer belonged to me, a heart that never fully allowed itself to be mine, and the fears that suffocated any hope of a fulfilling marriage.
I wanted this, right? I wanted to be free to live where my heart and head aligned. Where passion swelled the walls around us, and my lover desired the very smell of my skin. But I was left wanting; she remained guarded. And in the end, we were both exhausted.
My affection for the person she is will remain unchanged. I can only hope that in her efforts to reclaim her space, she might reclaim the bites of herself that she lost in us. I pray that her gentle spirit will continue to seek health love and that she may return to the illuminating woman, with that contagious smile, I first met on July 11, 2007.
As for now, she would be home soon and I was to be gone by then. I placed her engagement rings on the dining room table next to a shallow vase of fresh cut hydrangeas.
