Anniversary

I'm traveling east on I-80 today with friends. The last time I traveled this highway I was newly engaged, enroute with my fiancé to Ohio to meet my future in-laws. I can't help recall memories of today's date one year ago. Waking heavy hearted. The nauseous dread in my gut as I picked up the phone. The pain of breaking someone's heart. Breaking mine. The ring nestled in the folds of the down comforter. Staring at it and feeling the naked gap on my finger. The voice of grief summoning my pregnant friend from upstairs. Being held around her swelling belly. Fear that my sadness would penetrate her womb. Sleepless nights, my fingers working jigsaw puzzles to help distract my brain. 

I wish this anniversary marked a point where I could look back from a further place of moving on. That I could see how all this fits into a story for my good. That I could be grateful. I know the truths people gently try to tell me. The new me on the other side of this will be a better me than I knew before. Anger only hurts me, not him. But today my fists clench tightly around that anger. And I won't voice it here for fear of saying something I'll regret. But I don't want a new me. I want something easy. I want my heart to feel normal again. 

He seems to have moved on. Dating someone else. Telling her the same things he told me. Unconcerned with fulfilling his responsibility to me first. He told me over and over I was worth it. But I was only worth it until I broke up with him, until I stopped reassuring him and feeding him and making things work out. That's how it feels at least. Was I only worth what he could get from me? His words feel so empty. And now I worry that I just sound whiny and obsessive. That no one will want to read this because it's not filled with some profound revelation or theology for how to pass through such an anniversary with grace and poise.

 I'll get to a place where I believe the truth. Where I let go of the livid diatribe in my mind. Where peace comes and I trust hearing the Lord speak to me. That's about all the confidence I can muster. But today is not yet that day. And to claim anything different would be a lie.