Prepare yourself for a diatribe

and if you don't want to hear it, please don't read on. . .

So, I had a lot of time to think in the 10 or so days I was on the road, and unfortunately -  and apparently impossible not to- my thoughts dwell on the turn my life has taken in the last few years.

I have meant for quite some time to send apologies out there into the ether to the friend of a friend I spoke about when my husband first left. She was in her third year of abandonment at the time and unable to move on, bitter and depressed. I vowed not to be her. Arrogance on my part. Well, hello. Now I completely sympathize with her immobility. Mine seems to be more emotional than material, but still. . .

Something I've recently read resonated with me (and I would like to give credit where credit is due but can't remember who or what.) Anyhoo, it went something like this:

Now that he's gone, you can finally hear yourself think. Gather yourself back together. You've been in a lot of little pieces because you're always dealing with him, listening to him, checking on him, trying to find out what he thinks instead of what you think. Do that long enough, you can lose yourself. Just disappear. Don't I know it. I'm still looking for myself . . . 

I now realize that men are just a bandaid, we stick them over an uncomfortable truth we don't want to look at. That is, we're all ultimately alone. Everything else is illusion. We live in solitary confinement inside our own bodies. No man can complete me. I'm on this journey alone.

Ok, I'm done now.