Postmortem

Dear Lorenzo,

It's 6:37 p.m. Saturday evening and I just finished a lackluster dinner of grilled tofu and marinated mushroom salad. Amira is sitting in the dining room watching My Babysitter's A Vampire on Netflix and outside, Spring appears to have FINALLY come out of hibernation. At almost 7 p.m., darkness has not yet descended down upon us. Temperatures are no longer frigid, children have shed their Winter gear and are playing at Schreiber in light jackets and gym shoes at long last. Winter is over and on Tuesday, I will sign Amira up for Summer camp through the Parks District website.

We will never again spend endless hours in the Highlander, making the trek from Chicago, to Atlanta, to Boston and back home to Chicago again. And Amira and I won't do what we did during the past two Summers since you've been gone. We will not hop on a plane to Boston just as soon as school lets out. I will not park myself on my mother's couch, or my best friend's couch, numbing myself with television and Chinese take-out.

I am ready to start making a life for myself without you.

By the time I was in junior high I knew that I would never get married. It wasn't just my parents's perfectly pleasant divorce that had brought me to that conclusion. (If two people who were such great friends couldn't make a marriage work, I figured I wouldn't have a shot in hell either. ) It was...the absolute certainty in what I wanted out of life that made marriage so undesirable to me. My goal was to be beholden to no one. If I wanted to move to California at 25, I could do so (and I did). If I wanted to vacation in Mexico, or Jamaica, or Timbukfuckingtu, no one would be there to stand in my way. My only limits would be the restraints of my wallet and my imagination, not the guilt trip laid on me by a husband and house full of children.

I had a pretty fucked up view of relationships.

Falling in love with you came as a complete (and not entirely welcome) surprise. After our first conversation, I knew immediately that my time was up; I was head over heels for you before we even met in person. As far as I was concerned, I was screwed; my dreams of a life spent in solitary leisure now over.

We were opposites in many, many ways. While I dreamed of travelling the world (or at least the Caribbean) with my girlfriends and a carry-on filled with little more than sunscreen and chick lit, you dreamed of a wife and a bevy of babies, flat screen tv's in every corner of your house, an elaborate surveillance system and a white picket fence protecting all you held most dear.

But...in spite of (or maybe because of, who knows?) our many differences, we fell in love.  I don't think either of us truly realized just how different we were until Amira was born and the realities of parenthood set it. What I do know is that we loved each other. And though neither of us was perfect we truly, truly tried to make it work.

We both compromised A LOT. Not happily and I regret that now. I wish with all my heart I'd been able to give you everything you wanted, with as cheerful a heart as I could muster, in as cheerful a manner as you deserved. I resented you a lot of the time, Babe. I resented how much of myself I lost in trying to please you. I gave up WAY too much of myself (we both did) in an attempt to make us happy and one of my biggest fears is that...you weren't. And what sucks the most about that is that no matter how much I may have resented you, if I had the chance, I'd do it ALL over again. I'd roll the dice and take another chance on us cuz YOU were the only man I'd ever met who was worth all the compromise. I pray you felt the same way about me.

I'm moving on now, Lorenzo. Not because I want to but because you're gone and I don't have a choice.  I'm moving on now, not to another man (that thought is still so fucking depressing to me) but to another LIFE.

For all my complaints and resentment, the truth of the matter is, you kept me safe in a lot of different ways. But now it's up to me to venture forth and figure out who I am again without you calling so many of the shots. And I'm ready.

I hope, I pray, that you knew how much I loved you, how much I love you still. You used to always tell me that you knew but...I wish I'd done a better job of SHOWING you just how much you meant to me. I let motherhood get in our way A LOT. I was wrong for that and I hope you can forgive me. I hope you know that I truly didn't know any better. I hope you know that I feel blessed to have gotten to share eight years of my life with you. I hope you know I'd do it all over again.