It is quiet around here.  I am spending my time working extra shifts and unpacking.  That is it.  Marissa is going away to camp on Sunday.  She will be gone for 2 weeks.  I will be alone for the first time in a long time.  I miss Bob and his constant talking.  I miss the phone calls from him just to say hi.  I think that is the most different, knowing that I can’t pick up the phone if I want to.  I miss the kissykissy emails and the text messages.  Stop checking the phone!!  It is hard when everything around me reminds me of him.  His picture is everywhere.  He bought me most of my jewellery and a lot of my clothes.  A lot of things that I’ve been packing and unpacking are things that we picked out together.  His presence is everywhere.  I still can’t sleep very well.  I am awake most of the time, looking at the piles of boxes, trying not to get overwhelmed with all the work that I have to do, trying to fit all the stuff that I have into this tiny apartment, trying to get this place ready.  Ready for what, I don’t know.

The new apartment looks like crap.  It takes so long.  I hate moving and unpacking.  And we have so much stuff.  Unbelievable the stuff that I keep. I put a lot of stuff in storage when I moved in with Bob last summer.  I still have half of that stuff to get out.  Today, Marissa and I are moving the last load of things from the house.  I tried to get a lot of it done before I got the internet hooked up.  I knew that I’d be cruising the internet before long, reading blogs and playing on Facebook.  “Addicted,” Bob always said I was.  Better than drugs, I guess. 

Did I mention that I hate moving?? 

I am sitting here, thinking about my life and the road it has taken.   I'm calling it contemplation.  I do this sometimes.  I'm 42 years old.  Most likely, more than half my life is over.  That in itself is a scary thought.  It makes me think about all the things I have done.  And even more so about the things that I haven’t done.  I haven't changed all that much since I was about 20.  I don't feel like I'm getting (too) old.  But my life has taken a very different way than I would have thought.  If I think back to when I was 20, I had thought that by the time I was my age I would have been married and have 4 kids.  I have only one child and my marriage ended in divorce.  Another, almost-marriage has ended and that makes me sad in ways that I can’t even begin to explain.  I am in the process of moving for the second time in one year.  I feel very unsettled, like I don’t have a home or don’t belong.  The house that I am moving from was more of a home, even though we were there for only a year than my previous apartment that I lived in for 9 years.  This unbalanced feeling, I know, will pass but right now it is making me queasy every day.  I have no appetite.  I am sleeping even less than I normally do.  I do know that things will get better.  The betrayal and hurt that I feel right now will lessen as time goes on and I will learn to live differently, on my own again.  One thing I have learned is that time doesn’t stop for anything.  Not a marriage break-up, not a death.  It can speed past us while we are mourning the sorrows of our lives.  The moments, both good and bad, pass and if not captured, will get caught in the fuzzy cobwebs of our memories.  The wrinkles creep in, the grey hairs sprout and soon we are standing near the end of our road.  Hopefully, when we look back at that road, we see that our lives have had some meaning or purpose.  I would hope that I am on the right road, or at least heading in the right direction.  My child is safe and healthy.  I have a good job.  Because of those things, I am extremely grateful.  There is still something missing right now.  I need to find that something.  There are things I want to do and things that I need to do.  I hope to be able to continue on my journey of life, take my experiences and learn from them, not repeat past mistakes.  I want to be able to capture the good moments and tuck them into my memory so when I come to the end of my road, I can look back and see the images of my past and say, “It was good.”