Filling in that Pocket of Silence and A Burst of Inspiration

And for better or for worse, time passes.

The story of the girl who moved to France, who met and fell in love with a South African man in Paris, who became engaged one July day, and who felt her world fall apart after she returned to the States now seems like ancient history. It seems almost as if it were someone else’s story—familiar, but distant.

Nearly six months have passed since S called off the wedding.

And what happened in between July and January?

Well, days plodded by, and somehow, I existed. I moved to an apartment in the city. I got a new job working in a Kindergarten. I began taking evening and weekend classes. I made new friends. I began running competitively. And I wrote. Constantly. Because somehow, I felt that, if I could put the words I felt onto paper, the pain would start to go away. And it did. Little by little.

And I learned another tactic that has served me well these past few months.

About a month after S cancelled the wedding, I traveled to Michigan with my cousin, my would-have-been-Maid-of-Honor. She had rented the honeymoon cabin at Little Eden Camp in Onekama, and the two of us squeezed our bags into the tiny cabin and kayaked and hiked and played tennis for a week. We also met up with a friend of hers for lunch, and this friend was telling a story over our sandwiches and lemonade and offhandedly commented, “Rejection is so much worse than death.” This girl knew only the skeleton of my story and did not make the statement maliciously, but I felt my eyes fill with tears, and when her hand flew over her mouth in recognition, I mumbled and sputtered and tried to force the moment to pass. Later, I received a letter from her.

“It seems that, for now, I cannot detach myself from our conversation at lunch this Saturday. My heart hurts for you,” she wrote. She went on to tell me her story of loss, and at the end of her letter, wrote down a few things that she learned while swimming through sorrow. One was so helpful that I include it here: “This point is so difficult for me that I hesitate to even include it,” she wrote. “But live in each moment, in the present. In your pain, live in it, do not try to escape it. And in your pain, do not go back to relive what was done. There may come a time for that, but for now, try to let it go.”

I felt the beginning of something that felt like healing when I read that. For so long, I had walked around with a metaphorical stiff neck, not allowing myself to look too far in one direction or the other. I had kept my mind busy, not allowing it to wander to memories or plans. Thinking of how wonderful the past had been was unbearable. Conceiving a future without S was unthinkable. And I felt perpetually ill at ease for living in a tunnel like that.

But after receiving her letter, I relaxed. It was such a comfort to have the affirmation that I wasn’t engaging in some kind of act that would prevent healing. I needed to hear from someone who had treaded further along that things would be okay.

And things aren’t quite okay yet, but somehow, these months have passed, and my life has moved forward.

S, on the other hand, has not fared so well. He contacted me in late October, and as it turns out, has returned to South Africa after some thirteen years in France. Not long after he called off the wedding, he lost his position with the engineering company in France and was sent back to South Africa. He wrote a very cheerless update and signed off, “Cheers.” For a while, I plotted and schemed how to secretly send him money, but in the end, the plotting came to nothing. I am no longer linked to him. I am no longer responsible for him.

But (and by way of transition), I am responsible for myself, which is precisely why I am writing here again after several months of silent inactivity.

Tonight was a slow night at the retirement home where I work during the evenings, so I found myself jotting down my list of 2012 Resolutions on a Post-It note. One Post-It stretched into two, two into four, and soon, I had 25 resolutions written down. Some are pretty plebian (save more money, spend less money), some are resolutions I make every year (read 45 books), and some are going to be tough for me (submit five articles for publication, go on one meaningless date).

But suddenly, I sat back, looked at my yellow Post-Its with the ink scrawled across them, and I felt a flicker of excitement. If I actually kept up with these goals, I could really see some huge changes in my life.

So, I’ve decided that I am going record this year. For the first time in a long time (let’s face it, my resolutions rarely come about), I’m going to crack down on myself, get slightly uncomfortable doing things that are “good for me but not fun”, and I’m going to keep a Resolution Log.
Crazy? Probably. Self-Absorbed? Most likely.
And yet, why  not?

I may still be feeling sub-par about my life on December 2012, but if that is the case, it won’t be because I didn't try to change.

I’m tired of wallowing.
I’m ready for a change of scenery.

Now, on to the New Year…

Immobile

Somehow, the days and hours continue to pass, but I find that I lose gaps of time altogether. I’ll find myself sitting immobile at a green light or unable to recall what happened the previous day. I feel as though I’m living inside a bubble of some kind. I hear voices around me and see people around me. The words they say all make sense, but I can’t quite string them together to form any kind of meaning.

Nothing seems real except this pain. It feels ever present, like a dull ache, most of the time. For minutes, sometimes even an hour, I’ll think that maybe I’m healing. But then, the strangest things—the mention of a bridal shower, a headband with a peacock feather, the song Banana Pancakes— bring with them a memory and leave me incapacitated again.

There’s another feeling growing inside me, and this one embarrasses and shocks me. I think of S., and I feel angry. I’ve never felt truly angry at him before. But I do now. I feel angry at him for promising me he loved me. I feel angry at him for allowing me to love him for so long. I feel angry at him cutting off three years of a relationship with an email. I feel angry that I didn’t have the opportunity to ask questions and engage in a discussion when he decided our life together was over. Most of all, I feel angry at him for giving up on me.

Occasionally, I think of calling him. I imagine what I would say and how I would say it. I would stay calm and keep my voice even. I would ask him why, and I would tell him his behavior was cowardly and didn’t I deserve better?

But this kind of thinking is unhealthy, because I won’t call. If I did call, nothing would change. I would not be content with any answer he would give me, and the only thing I want—reconciliation—is now impossible. In his last message, he told me that he would call the US Embassy in Paris and cancel the interview he had set up to receive his fiancé visa. As soon as he made that call, whenever that was, our window of opportunity closed. We had worked up to and filled out papers to obtain that visa for months. It would take nearly a year to start over, and I don’t even know if legally we could start over. We’re kaput.

I now somehow have to move forward. I have to figure out what’s next for me. The life I had planned for myself is dead. There is no France, and there is no S.

So, what do I do and where do I go now?

Just.keep.breathing.

I like the feeling of being under water. I feel weightless and surrounded. The noises are dulled, and for once, I don’t mind the silence. I haven’t been much good at being silent lately. When I drive in the car, I turn the radio down, but I scream until my voice is hoarse. I’ve never done this before. I’ve never needed to. Under the water, I feel like no one can say anything that will hurt me. I won’t be able to hear it. Strangely, it’s the only time I feel safe.

Two full days have now passed since we cancelled the wedding. I’ve received the final email that came in response to my “Could you at least tell me why?”

“It came to a point where I couldn’t say that I wanted to go on with this,” he wrote. “Knowing what was waiting at the end of the tunnel didn’t carry me anymore.”

He told me just to throw out whatever I had left of his. But I bagged up most of his things and brought them to a charity shop. As I left, I noticed how many people looked actually grieved to be dropping things off. It occurred to me that these kinds of places must hold a lot of grief. I couldn’t, however, donate the sweater he proposed in or the sweater he wore for our engagement photos. Those I stuffed into a box, along with his wedding band, and took to the post office. I couldn’t keep those things anymore. I couldn’t spend any more time sitting on my floor, wearing his clothes and slipping his wedding band on and off my thumb.

I also sent another package. That one, I filled with the things people have given me as wedding gifts. I’m not talking about impersonal things like silverware, but about the apron with Mrs. C embroidered across the front and the letter C wall hanging. Those are the kind of things that are extra difficult to see. And those I mailed to the girl who would have been my sister-in-law, the girl who is married to his brother.

I’m nearly rid of everything. I’ve deleted his phone number, his email address, and his text messages. I no longer carry a photo of him in my wallet or have his photo on my cell phone. I thought I would print out all his emails before deleting them, but after printing off 61 pages and being only two months into our three-year relationship, I decided to stop. There were too many pages, too much love. I thought it would be painful to read the messages that we had written when we still couldn’t quite grasp that our feelings were mutual, but when I saw all those words I hadn’t read for years, I felt calmed somehow. “I still sometimes can’t believe that all this between us is real,” he’d written.  It helps me to think that, at some point, he did love me—that maybe in some strange way he might still—but for reasons I’ll never quite comprehend, things are over.

All of his pictures are gone from my parent’s house. When I got there yesterday, the family photo from Christmas was gone. The collage of photos from Paris was gone. The photo on the fridge from the Dominican Republic was gone. The photos have all been replaced with other photos of my brothers and their families. I’ve taken the pictures off my walls too, but I’ve left the frames up, empty. It somehow seems symbolic and necessary to do this. I’m not ready to replace anything yet.

Speaking of replacements, the dating comments have already started. “I know you’re not ready yet, but when you are, I know a really nice 29-year-old man who…” When the comments come, I smile politely, nod, but feel sickened at the thought of ever loving anyone else. “That’s farther than my long-term goals reach for the moment,” I want to say. “Right now, I’m just planning to stop all the clocks, sit in my wedding gown, and cry until a little boy called Pip comes into my life.”

“You’ll find someone,” people say.

“You’ve got everything going for you,” they tell me.

“Anyone would want to be with you.”

But I sob so hard that the muscles in my abdomen hurt, and I try to ignore that ever-present physical pain in my chest, and I mouth the words, “Yes, but he didn’t want me.”

Day 1

My fiancé called off the wedding yesterday, and as I write this, I’m wearing the sweater he wore when he proposed, trying to sniff his smell out of its sleeves.

It’s strange to me how like grief this feels. We were an international couple—he in France, me in the United States—so our interactions consisted mostly of Skype and emails. Now, there’s nothing. I’ll never see him, never cross paths with him, never know anything of him again. He, in some ways, has died. People tell me I’m fortunate to be able to go through my life, knowing we’ll never run into one another again. I don’t feel anything fortunate about the situation.

I do notice, however, that everyone else’s love swells and stretches to cover his lack of it. I’m receiving eternal hugs from parents and siblings. Everyone wants to do something to ease the hurt. The barista at Starbucks offered me my caramel macchiato free after I sobbed my way through the drive-through. “You shouldn’t have to pay if your day is already this bad,” she said. My sister-in-law took me to a restaurant and I sat there, across from her, slurping down glass after glass of Coke, but struggling to swallow solid food. I perpetually feel like I have the flu. My throat is closed.

Returning things and cancelling things has been the greatest trouble. I called to cancel the bridesmaid dresses, but the manufacturer had already started the sewing, so I simply received an “I’ll see what we can do.” I drove over and tried my hand at begging, but I realized quickly how pathetic I looked—my hair crazy, my new chic glasses smeared with mascara and steamed with tears. I looked past the sales women to see girls trying on their wedding gowns with young men I imagine must be their fiancés. Everyone looked at me in horror. Shops like this should be happy places. “I once looked just as happy as you do,” I wanted to say. But I didn’t, not because I had the self-control, but because I had a sister-in-law with me who ushered me out before I could make a scene.  The photographer, who also happens to be my aunt, cancelled with no financial penalty, but offered the stunned silence that “The wedding is off” inevitably brings. The silence was followed by apologies. I didn’t know what to say to them. What should one say to, “I’m sorry”? As for the rings, they couldn’t be returned. After being turned away from the jewelry store—and, to my dismay, the woman put the two rings back in a fancy bag with wrapping, which painfully mirrored the day when we’d bought the rings six months earlier—I decided to go down a different route and try selling them for scrap metal. The man at the store was nice enough, but when he put the magnifying glass up to his eye and clinked away at the diamond with something that looked like an ice pick, I felt myself growing ill. He came back beside me, told me he would melt the rings down into something new. He offered me only $122 for the engagement ring and the two wedding bands. I felt my hand clamp down over the rings, and I told him “No, thank you” and left. I knew I’d rather keep them in a box forever than sell them to be melted into nothing. Maybe it’s crazy, but the rings have represented so much happiness for me. “It’s too soon,” the man at the shop said. “I think you should sit and think about what you want to do before you do anything rash.”

I know it’s soon to be cancelling and driving from place to place, but the wedding is off. There was no phone call or visit. Just an email sitting in my inbox when I checked my messages at 8 that morning. “Dear Katie,” it read, “I’ve been waiting for a good moment to write this, but what timing could possibly be good for such news?” He wrote on in his overly-formal, learned English that there really are no explanations, that his love has cooled, and that I should go on to live a very happy life.

It took me hours to write up a “Thank you for being honest response” and assuring him I would do my best to get his things back to him. After years of dating, whirlwind trips through Amsterdam, Bruges, Gent, and Paris, this is how it ends.

And today, I woke up, having forgotten the breakup while I slept, but feeling the missing ring on my finger. I walked to the bathroom, splashed water on my face, and told my reflection that today would be better. But I promptly collapsed on the floor and cried until the tears dried up. It’s 8 in the morning. Twenty four hours since everything fell apart. It’s going to be another long day.