Day 6, Cold bones

I got into my jeep and began my journey to work. Frozen to the bone, I felt the enormity of the tasks ahead of me. Depression, like a fog, hits gently. You don't even know that you are there, until you look in the mirror and notice the sallowness of your face, and feel the weight of the hairbrush as you valiantly try to stroke your mane. I am tired today. Almost too tired to write. But, I will not stay down for long. I need to wrap myself around this and keep going forward one baby step at a time. There are bound to be tough days. I comfort myself in the allusion of a sunny beach. Without luster, I glimpse at my side mirror and bully on through the traffic until I reach my destination. The papers aren't ready yet. The lawyer has not contacted me yet, and I am feeling nervous. Should I warn Robin about them; be kind, let him know that I am not ever coming back. Or should he just be served them cold complete with the little blue tab on the top left hand corner. I feel sick. I can't call because I know, I know he will have something to say about Heather, and the misunderstanding that he called my friends adamantly about. I don't want to hear it and I don't want to get sucked in, but I long for days when we were happy and that this was not my life. The life I knew was one that was not ending in divorce. The one that I knew was void of pain and I was in the honeymoon period of the cycle. The one that I convinced myself that everything would be okay and that this would pass. I pictured his face and the same disgusted disdain he presented to me when he screamed at me on New Years Day of 2010: "Look at you, look at you. who would ever want to sleep with you. You are fat and gross. What do you produce. Nothing. Sure I could take a pill and get it hard and stick it in ya, but it would do nothing for me. Look at you." The words typed don't do the moment justice. He spit and looked evil when he spoke. I sat in a chair facing him while he proceeded for over a half an hour to tell me just how inadequate he believed I was. If I had of moved, the escalation would have surely turned into an assault. I knew it that time. I knew it like I knew my own name. Finally he stood, and slammed out the front door and the clock that he gave to me as a wedding present, click clacked off the wall and landed on the floor. In silence, I walked to the end of the hall and closed the bedroom door. I locked it.

I put my foot on the brake, and unconsciously drive up to the red light. I knew what I was doing, but I felt nothing but the heat of my tears over the remembrance as they slowly burned my cheeks. I knew what was happening to me, and I knew what he had said, but I desperately wanted it all to be just a bad dream. I turned on the radio and romanticized my bravery. He would be a memory soon enough I told myself. But, I knew that there would be more days like this and in the next few days particularly, I needed to brace myself.

Once the papers were received, what would happen then? I feel my heart race and I look towards the heavens and I ask for redemption. I feel cold in my bones.

I drive on.