OCR Text |
Show system or her work with the Nebraska Humanities Council, she glitters in the fall sun. And I am shocked, fifteen years later, shocked. Because I know how I felt at that moment, that clear day in October, how I hated my dress, felt out of place with the other attendants, was sure that my escort, a Sig Ep named Jason, was embarrassed that he had to ride in the car with me, stand on the football field with me, hold his arm out for me, when the other women were so thin, so beautiful, so fun to be around, how that was the same month I learned that John had been cheating on me with Heidi, a woman who could sway her body to reggae in a way that made men stare. And I have never, then or now, felt like I owned anything, let alone the world. When John wakes me up three years later and tells me that he no longer loves me like he might tell me that he is too hot or has a stomachache, I am stunned to the point that I do not even cry and actually go back to sleep. In the morning, I have to ask him if he really wants to leave me as it will feel like our conversation was a dream. Then I will get in the shower, choose some clothes, and drive with him to the school where we both work. It will take several years before I understand that John had left me long before that fall night. The lengths I went to keep John from leaving me are as painful to me now as they were necessary to me then. There were the months of counseling where I was told in no uncertain terms by the therapist that John did not love me and that I needed to get over him, there was the span of a school year where we pretended to be happily married to our friends and family, and there were long conversations where I would try and understand how love unraveled. Each week I would get 220 |