It had been over for a while, the relationship, really.
Toward the turn of the year, I started feeling bored. We’d been fighting a lot, but I kept hanging in there. And then part of me said, I’m done.
It’s rarely me who ends a relationship, although we all know that the first one out wins. Perhaps there’s a small thrill of victory.
I’m sad, though.
This morning, I puttered in the kitchen, making cranberry sauce for tonight, a little blurred but happy. A watery sun broke the clouds between spates of rain. My housemate, tetchy from physical pain, came in to cook, and we ran into each other emotionally.
I went to see chosen family. Everybody was busy. A fractious child snapped at me. It broke something; I had to go.
Back home, I slunk to the bedroom. I don’t even know what I was crying for—some upwelling of old pain.
My birth family fought every holiday. That’s not unusual. I don’t mean to go looking for old wounds.