“I feel the Earth Move under my feet…”

Yesterday, my ex-husband told me he got married.  He told me in December that he was going to get married, so it shouldn’t have hurt.

It shouldn’t have hurt, but it did.  It shouldn’t have hurt because we split 17 years ago, but it did — and it does — hurt.

I thought we were best friends, and we were – and probably still are – when I get over mourning this marriage that was over 17 years ago.

I don’t know why it was such a surprise or why I am hurt or why it should make a difference.  but, it does.

I say I don’t know why it hurts, but I do.  And, it doesn’t have anything to do with him.  It has to do with something that happened with my father when I was 10.

That’s when I found the note from  my father’s girlfriend in my mother’s dresser drawer.  I don’t remember much except she said…

She said, “I know you can’t leave your family,” and it was signed, “I love you, Ray.”  Ray was my sister’s god-mother and my father’s secretary.  I knew her.

I was dumbstruck like a silly putty gob stuck to the carpet.  My mother walked in, saw me with the letter, took it…

My mother took the letter out of my hands and said, “You shouldn’t be reading that.”  She folded it up, put it in her pocket and walked out of the room.

I have been holding my whole life together ever since so that no one would leave.  And they all do.  Even if they stay, I make them leave.

I construct the leaving so they can’t stop the leaving in a certain way.  Even after they’ve left, it’s stuck like a tree stuck…

Like a tree stuck in the ground, growing away, away, away, but the roots are in the same place, giving even the growing a grounding…

That it can’t get away from.  I wonder if the leaves know they are part of the roots or do they think they’re free?

I am the earth.

I am the earth and I know better.

Deliciously yours in the Bittersweetness of it All,   Linda

“Release from the bondage of the earth is not freedom to the tree.”  Rabindranath Tagore

© Linda Ruocco and “Spiritual Chocolate”, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Linda Ruocco and “Spiritual Chocolate”  with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.  Thank you.