There were things I didn’t tell you.
When I wrote to you to tell you I was still here, living in Idaho, a writer, with twins.
When I wrote to you that February day ten years ago that I was remembering you.
Remembering who we were some thirty years before.
The lack of air between us. The rubbery connection that was our tether. The unbridled laughter, eyes locked, bodies tumbling like grade school children on an overstuffed gym mat.
When I wrote to you that day. To peek into your life and see if there was any room for me….I left out a few things.
I didn’t mention that I spent my days in sweat pants reliving the disappearance of me during a twenty-year marriage.
That I was taking ritilin to get myself up in the morning and paint the walls in my house a color heretofore forbidden.
I didn’t mention that my son was on medication and moving into an adolescent world I didn’t understand and was frightened of.
Or that my daughter’s joyous giggle had been pressed into a starchy white apron of appropriateness.
I didn’t tell you that I longed for your voice of acceptance. The guy who saw me as the young, funny woman I always saw myself to be.
I didn’t tell you any of these things.
I will someday.
It’s odd to find yourself reading such a private moment and yet as a friend I was there in that moment and remembering how you were feeling. I remember the pain you were in .