Maureen wasn't sure what to do next. She looked around the room full of boxes and sighed. Her house was empty. All the stuff was still there, but the parts that mattered were far gone. She lifted up one of the few ultra fragile boxes that she didn't dare let the movers touch. Two steps forward she stumbled and the box fell hard to the ground. The chilling chime of glass and ceramic hit her with a force.
She kicked the box. And then again but with more force. It wasn't fair. This all was terribly wrong. She kept looking for a way out. A way to stop this from being the truth. She didn't care that she was to blame. That she cheated first and she put her career before her husband. At least she tried to the very end. She didn't leave when Mark put unreasonable demands to punish her for being unfaithful. And she didn't look for a way out when even there therapist said she was the one to blame for all their problems.
He was the one that stopped caring. He was the one that grew distant. And he was the one that finally left. Like a spoilt child, Maureen fell to the ground on her but. She hadn't executed that particular move since she was 12 and didn't expect the sharp pain in her but bone. At least the pain was an excuse for the tears.
She'd been avoiding this for a long time. It was hard to admit what she'd lost. The idea of mourning a marriage seemed silly. The deed was done. The papers were signed and the boxes packed. He wasn't even in the same state anymore. She needed to move on. But her heart hurt. And she wanted to lash out, to put this pain outsider herself.
If Mark was still here she'd have someone to inflict her anger on. She always thought he would be around forever and she wasn't the only one. Everyone thought they were the perfect couple. No one believed that they were going to split up. Their friends held onto the hope of reconciliation until the very last moment. It took the hard truth of divorce papers to convince them.
She lay back onto the dingy carpet. There didn't seem any point to vacuuming. It wasn't her house to clean anymore. Was this really her life? She put her hands over her face. All she had left was a job she resented for ruining her marriage and friends that always liked Mark better than her. And this feeling in her chest that the pain will never end. Every time she thought she was out of tears, she found there was more just waiting in the wings.
Maureen sat up. The box of broken keepsakes was trash now. She might as well take it out. Movement kept her from thinking too much. She hefted the box roughly into her arms and headed out to the trashcans. The air outside smelled of chimney smoke and wet leaves. It was a beautiful autumn day. Leaves, in so many earthy shades she couldn't count, fell down around her as she walked.
At the trashcans she dropped in the box without ceremony. It fell into the black plastic hole with a satisfying crunch. Starting down at the box she wondered if this is where it happened. Were these the moments when she became a bitter old hag? She was in the second phase of her life and all the dreams from her childhood were dead. The person she wanted to be, the person she loved being, was dead.
She couldn't imagine starting over. She was too old to find love again. And she was too used to comfort to lower her cost of living. The lump in her throat choked her as a fresh wave of tears came on. An empty house loomed over her. She didn't want to go back in there and face that sea of boxes. It was chilly but she liked the feeling of goose pimples that woke up her flesh. The cold was painful in a good way.
At work she told people everyday that attitude was what you made of it. She implied that all they needed to do was make a choice. Thinking about those words made her feel all that more hypocritical. She wanted to make a choice, to leave this funk. She didn't want this to be the end of her life. But how do you live through something like this with your attitude in tact? How do you survive that which seems unsurvivable?
In the past she was able to keep her sunny perspective because there was always something in her life to focus on. She survived the bad times because there was someone with her, living through the same thing she was. Even when she hated Mark he was still her boon companion. Now he was with someone else. And that someone else was pregnant with the child that Maureen swore she would never have.
The cold was finally chewing at her bones. She turned to walk back down the street. There was one person that wouldn't let her give up on life. Her sister kept berating her, saying that even if she lost everything she still had herself. Maureen didn't want to hear that she wasn't the kind of person to give up. She didn't want to hear that starting her life over was just another bump in the road. She didn't want to hear the truth.
Hard as it was right now, she didn't want to die. As depressed and angry and nearing rock bottom as she was, she didn't want this to be the end. She just wasn't sure which path to take next. And the idea of making that decision, of finding the next path, was terrifying. It scared her because that meant she didn't have any excuse to keep weeping. She didn't have any reason to be bitter. Because when a door closes a window opens.
Maureen looked walked up the sidewalk and stopped a distance away from the house that wasn't hers anymore. She folded her arms and swallowed the lump in her throat. It was a bitter taste that she swallowed. The taste of things that were destroyed. And her mouth was left empty. A clean palette, just waiting to be washed with new flavor.
She walked into the house and found a way to finish the job at hand.
The End
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