I am so broken these days that it’s tough to see through the debris and find myself.  At the same time, I’m so scared of even trying because of the heartache that surely follows.  So I try to leave myself behind - except now, I live in limbo.  A slowly spiraling hover over the toppled buildings.  I’m waiting for her.  It’s like I died too but no one came to get me.

Remembering who I was becomes an intellectual exercise.  I can tell you I claimed the titles of psychologist, wife, stepmother, introvert, homebody.  These still ring true but are covered with a dreamy film.  Like faded photos, the colors are no longer reinforced.  Can I trust that it was ever true at all?

My mind resists looking back at myself.  It’s like returning to the scene where a bomb went off.  My home was ground zero.  Everything began to pivot in different directions.  When I try to think of how it was, an automatic thought bubble pops up - That’s no longer true, move along.  I know it’s trying to protect me so I trust that I shouldn’t go into the rubble.

Still, I wonder what can be salvaged.  Surveying the damage to my battered body, the voices in my mind conflict.  One says, “Don’t look, you’re still in physical [mind] therapy to get stronger.  You need to learn to walk again first.” She is a mothering nurse type.  The other one, a cynical realist, says, “Take the clothes on your back and start over.  Run far away.”  They represent a dichotomy of sorts: avoid or deal, wait or do it now, fuzzy or real.  Neither and both are right.  A flip of the coin shows both.

I write long journal entries, searching for the missing parts of who my wife was - the parts I missed.  She is a reflection, a compliment, to me.  I wonder if I should follow her lead.  Would we end up in the same place again?  My psychological autopsy reveals her but I suspect it’s both of us I’m looking for now.

By tracing her thoughts and personality, I can’t help but see the mirror image of myself.  Her mind began to curve away from my care of her tender parts and I, rebuffed, curved too.  A disappointment for both, I’m sure.  The arcs always came back to each other, intersecting, joining.  I loved her as much as she’d let me.  If I filter out her lines and curves, what is left?  I am proud and sad that I wasn’t always following.  Proud because I stayed true to myself and sad because I wonder how much I didn’t save her.  I caused distress on top of her struggle.

Mostly, I believe I was very good at my roles, my titles.  I loved all, including myself, to the fullest extent.  Her ending forces me to look for not only what was present but also, what was absent. Dissecting the past,  a scalpel looks for signs of my hidden malignancy. I want to blame myself for her suicide because it’s a modicum of control.  But even this has a dichotomy - I could have been more forceful but it would take from her autonomy.  I could have reinforced my esteem for her, even more than I did, but it would have flooded her.  The unmooring truth is that ultimately, I had little control.  What’s left is still self-criticism; why was I drawn to love a person who would ultimately self-destruct?

I don’t know how or even if I should pick up the charred and broken parts of who I used to be.  I am an alien to myself.  The puzzle pieces will never connect to form the same picture.  Even more foreign is the thought of creating something entirely new.  I circle back to limbo, longing for the life from which I was abruptly ejected and unable to move forward. I am angry for this consolation prize of a life.  My mind cries out, “I did everything right! I deserve my rewards!” Was I even the one who built this biosphere or was it a sand castle, reclaimed by an omnipotent tide?

Some days, amidst my piercing investigations, I can examine my own remains.   I could start using my engrained empathy again - move space within myself - and like before, be the psychologist in service to my patiently awaiting clients.  I could pick up the undeveloped thread I was saving and focus my gifts on writing.  At this fork in the road, I give myself choices.  In lieu of walking, I scout out the path ahead with binoculars.  A telescope sees farther than I’d like.

My investigation of who she was, I was, we were, does yield a fruitful road at times.  I smell the sweetness of our respective cores.  Both similar and compliments, we gave more than we took and loved each other well.  I was kind, loving and generous.  I struggle to leave her out, leave her behind, in the separate description of myself.  It is too desolate to bear our fairy tale romance with an unhappy ending.  What is the moral of this story?  I fantasize a definitive peace in which our story continues after my death.  I want to know we were meant to be together, and will be together again, in order to take the deliberate steps into my subpar life.  And thus, I wait.