Tuesday, July 13, 2010

today; plus 2 days, minus 2 years

it's monsoon season again--where has the year gone? i remember listening to the torrential downpour last year when i lived in Yonsei. again again--warm rains come down fiercely and clear the air of pollution.

this week has been crazy and interesting and hectic. i just started summer classes--i've only got one, every morning at 8:20am until 9:10am, and then i'm off for the rest of the day. i've played around on the internet at school for a few hours, worked out, and then gone gallivanting around Seoul--meeting friends, shopping, going to the book store, listening to music and reading books while commuting from one end of the subway line to another. yesterday, i got a pastel yellow manicure after eating dukbokki, drinking coffee, then buying a birthday gift. it's felt good to be moving this much, and i'm surprised to see how tan i've gotten as i've been out and about.
this summer, i've been active--going hiking, running, or rafting every weekend. i did a rock-climbing wall about 2 weekends ago, and it was fabulous. i believe i've found another expensive hobby.

it amazes me that it's already the end of July 2010. how did this happen? we're already approaching the fall, and then there'll be another winter, and then another birthday, and then another new year. i'll be 32 in December.

today, i was wedding shopping w/ Praise and while we were smoking outside after enormous bowls of noodles, it started spattering on us. we started moving towards shelter, but:
"we can handle a little drizzle--"
but then sudden flood--
"yikes! into-the-awning!-into-the-awning!"
and then as quickly as it began, it stopped. we shook our heads. puzzling.

shopping w/ Praise today was refreshing and fun--though a little strange as i was observing and helping her along with the process of getting her wedding together. i remembered the endless last minute decisionsdecisions i had to make when i was getting my wedding together--almost 6 years ago. there's a mild forlornness that checks in occasionally as i think about Chris and i and how our lives were so entwined those years past.

today, it is just 2 days shy of our last wedding anniversary, 2 years ago. the one where Chris promised that he would be home, but he didn't come. the day before, he had promised to be a decent human being. he understood that it meant something to me for him to come home--not necessarily because i believed in the tenability of reconciliation--but moreso because i wanted an ounce of proof that he had not evolved into a complete monster. i remember laying on that brown vinyl couch in the darkening living room of our broken home, feeling the pain of yet another broken promise.
i remember how out-of-control everything felt on that day and the ones surrounding it. if my beloved Chris could lie to me so utterly, and could so intentionally cause me such pain--what could i believe in anymore? whom could i trust? what was i to do? the concrete future that i had so invested in was melting through my fingers like dry sand.
that pain--that sharp, stomach-wrenching pain, that you read about in books and can hear in the piercing wails of a devastated soul--that was all i could feel when i wasn't feeling numb with the un-reality of it all.

weeks ago, Praise had asked me if i was ok with helping her--and i assured her that i absolutely was. as i mentioned, though there were prickles of discomfort as i walked along with her today, i felt a joy in relieving some of the burden that came with her frenetic last-minute preparations for her wedding.
she is a dear friend--who, more than any of my other friends--has walked with me on the shaky ground of being a newly-divorced, then not-as-newly-divorced woman. she has been infinitely patient with me at times and has given me her unique perspective as a liberal Believing female who had been single for most of the decade that i was tied to Chris.

she's my sister. i love her.

i'm turning the rest of the thoughts/events that transpired today/this week into a chapter... i'm not going to get any sleep tonight, i imagine--but it feels super cathartic to write some of this down.

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