A Story Without an Ending - Yet

A phone call....it starts out pleasant enough, although I wish I didn't need to make it.

"I have some mail for you," I tell him.  "You should probably change your address at the doctors office and the lab."

"Oh, ok...no problem."  He goes on to explain a few other things.  He actually sounds really good.  Completely coherent and present, unlike so many times in the past year.

"Also, I need to get the information on the accounts you opened at the bank after we separated, " I told him.  "They need that on the court documents."

Hesitantly he asks if I am still going through with it. He tells me how hard he has been working. He tells me that he had hoped I had changed my mind.  I tell him that I love him but that we can't be together, that I can love him more freely this way. I can wish him only the best when I am not feeling the hateful resentment that daily reminders would inevitably stir up in me.

Voice cracking, he holds on, grasping and forcing me to say things I wish I never had to say. I tell him how we were not good together and that we lived a crazy life. He reminds me that that was only because he was using. "But that is not really true...our life had been crazy for a long time and I'm more than willing to say I played my part in it," I tell him. Finally, after tears and begging, defeatedly, with a whisper, he says goodbye.

I'll cry now, for him and for what we once were, then I'll pull myself together. I have a life to look forward to and, hopefully, he does also. But right now my chest hurts and air is hard to come by.

My tools??? They're right here working. Breath,, Just for Today I can do this, God Grant me the Serenity, Healthy Boundaries, This Too Shall Pass.  Starting to be ALMOST second nature.

Thank you God, Thank you.