If I chain myself to my dead husband, will I ever truly live again?
And yet how can I let go of a love and a man that still mean everything to me?
There is too much on my heart, too much weighing on my shoulders. Depression comes in fast and fiercely, without apology and without reprieve.
Depression leaves me feeling heartsick and hopeless. Ben is the only fresh air in my stale, stagnant thoughts. Yet I will eventually have to let him go too.
And then my depression will become twofold. Once for the man that I will always love, but can never be with again. And once for the man that I will have to choose to never be with in the first place.
It is agony to live like this.
I love one man and I am falling in love with another.
I am grieving and I am celebrating.
I find moments where I am truly happy.
But at the end of the day, when I am alone and left to my thoughts and my grief, I find that I am so very depressed. And that is the very beginning of me and the very end.
I am nothing but depressed.
Chapter Twenty
Five days passed before I saw Ben again. True to his word he had called me the day after our date. And when I hadn’t answered, he had texted asking me to call him back.
I hadn’t done that either.
I managed to avoid running into him over the weekend and into the school week. My kids kept me busy. Soccer season was in full swing for both of the older kids, and Lucy andJacehad started swim lessons. I had signed them up weeks ago, hoping we would be able to use Ben’s pool during summer.
Now the lessons felt like little digs at my heart, painful reminders of what I’d ruined between us.
I couldn’t face him again. I couldn’t look into his eyes and remember that kiss and not fall to pieces.
Worst of all, I didn’t want to give that up.Himup.
I wanted there to be more.
When I lay in bed at night now, I reached over to Grady’s side and felt the crushing weight of his absence. But then I would close my eyes and remember the feel of Ben’s lips against mine, the hard press of his body, the firm grip of his hands as he held me tightly to him, as desperate for me as I was for him.
My mind would spin and my thoughts would crash into each other. My heart couldn’t figure out where to settle, whether to feel guilt or elation, shame or joy. It was too much for me. I walked around those days with tears I could not stop and a sick feeling in my stomach.
I tried to convince myself that if I felt this ill about Ben, then I shouldn’t be with him. A relationship couldn’t be built on emotions as volatile as these.
But in the depth of me, in my very center, I knew that it wasn’t Ben causing this trauma. It was my refusal to acknowledge my feelings for Ben that had me tied up in knots. It was the suppression of my real feelings that made me ill and heartbroken.
I knew he would get tired of my avoidance. Ben wasn’t the kind of man that ran from problems. He faced them head on and like with everything else, he challenged me to do the same.
But I desperately hoped he would give up on me. I needed him to walk away and find someone that could actually give back to him what he wanted… what he needed.
Late Wednesday night, a knock at my door warned that the time had come to face Ben.
I sat curled up on the couch, a book lying listlessly in my hands. I had been planted there for an hour and hadn’t read a single word.
I looked through to the door, heart already pounding, breath already shortened. I couldn’t bring myself to move from the couch. How would I face him? How would I tell him I couldn’t do this?
My brain warred with my heart. My soul argued with my intellect. I knew what I should do, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was forcing myself to lose someone I cared about all over again, only this time there was no one to blame but myself.
When I agreed to his date, I had been so worried that I would ruin things with my awkwardness and emotional unavailability that he wouldn’t want to continue any kind of relationship with me. Not even friendship. But it had been easy to be with Ben.So easy.
