“When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.”
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
I’m still editing this memoir.
Because of that, I did something really dumb.
I couldn’t remember a detail about someone’s appearance. An old friend from the past. Turtle. What colour were his eyes? I couldn’t tell in any of the old photographs I have.
So I googled him.
There he was, standing beside his wife and child. Beside him, unexpectedly, the brother and wife of my ex-husband.
I clicked on the image, which led me straight to facebook.
And there, there was the life I walked away from. All of my ex-husband’s family. Their marriages. Their children.
I’d forgotten how much I loved them all. How dear they were to me.
Their children are young adults now, and I’d only known them as babies. Such a fine, big family. Still doing all the things that I once did with them.
Weirdly, some of those grown children look so much like me at that age that I could claim them as my own.
I didn’t know that this stupid simple act of googling one image would lead to this. My heart broken open. My stupid eyes overflowing with tears. My body one big bruise, and each image poking it harder and harder.
I’m not sorry that I am no longer married to my first husband. I love the life I have. I love my husband Ben fiercely. I’d never change places.
But seeing these images brought to my awareness, so strongly, all that I have lost after thirty years of lyme disease.
This morning I am hollow. I can barely talk. That’s okay. The Byron Bay Writers Festival starts today. So I shall go sit in big white tents and listen to authors speak about their books and their writing processes, and their beautiful ideas. And perhaps I’ll find a kindred moment, with someone else who poked a bruise as hard as me.
