Aug
27
Memorizing Epitaphs
August 27, 2005 | |
Tonight was strange. Tonight was a night I had been dreading for weeks.
Tonight was the eve before I move back in with my husband, the man I chose to take a leave of absence from, no less than 2 years prior. My once one and only whom I still owe a favor that will surely cost me–or at least expunge the residual guilt which has rusted over me.
And henceforth, impeeded my attempts at moving on and getting over myself once and for all.
But I am indeed indebted. And being a responsible girl with a conscience that will not allow closure,
I decided to pay the fiddler, finally. 27 months, 10 days, and six hours later.
Tonight I was instructed by my estranged husband, ex-lover and reunited partner, to payback my debt by convincing certain governmental authorities that our marriage was indeed bonafide.
(And the irony is–it is).
I was instructed to compile a convincing display of our buried past together. To pry open a coffin full of hushed half-healed memories I decidedly snuffed alongside with my wedded vow to him.
Maybe this was his final stab at retaliation, and a brilliant one at that because fingering through old photos of our once happy life was more painful than his ruthless backlash post adulterous affair.
But like a good wife, I respected my hsuband’s request and carried out this duty.
On a mission to find that erroneous perfect tasteful yet not too thought out leatherbinder that would encase out history as a bonafide couple in love. Not a task as easy as one may imagine, as I roamed from drugstore to giftshop to stationer cursing my ridiculous efforts the whole way. As I had earlier promised myself–I would not invest too much time into this–as it was only a charade after all, a means to an end to free the both of us in more ways than one.
And I promised myself I would not succumb to my usual perfectionistic tendencies. Why would I?
Who was I trying to fool anyway? Certainly not myself. Yet if that were the case, why was I fawning so hard over asian inspired parchment versus classic embossesed leather? 3 stores past and 90 minutes later I got over myself and settled for the B&N clasic black leather slimline, which was actually my second choice. But my first, one more artisitic and slightly more edgy as far as photo albums were concerned, was $27.99. An investment $9.00 above and beyond my dedication to this task. As $27.99 was reaching the mark that would indicate I actually respected what was in the pages to come, a truth I was not yet willing to accept. $19.99 was a far less meaingful purchase…
Lies. If I really believed this were the case, I wouldn’t have spent 45 minutes organizing my tangeled computer cords beforehand. Nor would I have bothered brushing my flokati carpet backwards to make it appear fluffier. I most certainly would not have been inspired to whip up a slew of Basil/Ginger basmati rice for myself, and I most definately would not have wasted 2 seconds watching “Filthy Rich Cattle Drive….”
But I did.
I did all these pathetic things first. Because lying to myself now seemed almost worse than it did 3 years ago, before I had any excuses, before I needed to escape. Before i formulated my getaway plan.
And only after the Barbie Twins True Hollywood story was coming to a (thankful) close, did I decide to bite the bullet and sink my teeth into our epitaph. And as I painfully peiced together one genuine smiling moment after the next , I wondered if I would ever find love like that again…
Or more importantly,
could I even recognize it?
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