It Was Me

Today, bloggy friends, I am going WAAAAAY out of my comfort zone.

I wrote this prompt for the Red Dress Club.  The prompt was a memoir.  The topic was after you have died, your daughter/son will be given the gift of seeing a single five-minute period of your life through your eyes, feeling and experiencing those moments as you did when they occurred. What five minutes would you have him/her see?





The following is what poured out . . .

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"Just come home, Annie,"  my mom pleaded over the phone.   Then she dropped her tone, and restated the offer simply, "Come home."

The words hung there as I cradled the phone against my shoulder. 

Come home.

"I'll think about it mom."  I answered half-heartedly.

Then I repeated it.   "I promise, mom.  I will think about it."

But thinking about it was exactly what I did not want to do.  Thinking about it made it real, and for the moment, my morning's activities were still stuck in the un-real.

If I didn't think about it, I could pretend that it wasn't me that had stood in front of a courtroom that very morning.  It certainly wasn't me nervously wringing my hands as the judge spoke sternly to first me and then to my husband.  It couldn't have been me that barely noticed my attorney's steadying hand on my shoulder when the judge gave his verdict.  And clearly, it wasn't me that had to momentarily sit down when the judge declared that the marriage, my marriage, was dissolved.

Divorce.

It couldn't have happened to me.

But it did.

It happened to me.

I was twenty four years old, hundreds of miles away from my family, and I was divorced.

Alone.

My shame threatened to choke me, and as I glanced at my reflection in mirror, it was hard for me to look myself in the eye.

"How could you have let this happen?"  I accused the mirror me.

I studied myself and waited for an answer, but there was none.  There was just my reflection.  Limp unwashed hair, mascara stained cheeks, and pointy collar bones stared back at me daring me to answer. 

Disgusted, I turned away from me, but when I did, I caught a flash from my gold hoop earring.  And that's when I realized it.

I had on one gold hoop earring, and I had on one diamond stud.

I had gone to court, stood in front of the judge, and participated in my own divorce proceedings wearing two different earrings.

It was just too much.  I started to giggle.  Then, my shoulders began to quiver and I gave in to the laughs. Soon enough, the laughs gave way to tears. 

And through the snot and mascara and tears, I noticed something that I hadn't seen in a long, long time.
My smile.

It was me.

It happened to me.

But, I was smiling. 

I was still smiling.

I picked up the phone, dialed my mom, and when she answered I stated clearly with no explanation, "Mom?  . . . I am home."