nauseating smell of flowers
I love spring, but the heavy perfume of blossoms in the air right now is too much. I know, I should be ashamed for complaining about something so lovely -- but lovely is relative.
Today I was ruminating over my lost relationship with CB. It's seasonal -- all grief. You feel it anew in each season. Today I dug the weeds out of the still blooming daffodils SK brought me before she left and I planted, along side those daffodils, a few bulbs of rooting garlic. I smelled the air and flashed immediately back to the previous springs spent with CB. Working in the garden. Mowing the lawn. Last year we turned this ancient, rusty wheel-barrow into an herb-planter. We parked it in the full sun on the side of the house and planted it with basil and dill, which *thrived* and grew like we never imagined.
Yes, I'm aware that I miss my life there more than I actually miss her. It doesn't matter. It still feels sad and disorienting. Looking back today, I'm still stunned that my life is no longer there, in that house, with her. Right until the very end, I never imagined I would leave. I had not been looking for the escape hatch in my relationship with CB, even as things started going downhill. It was only utter desperation that drove me away in the end. The drinking and everything else became so unbelievably extreme. And now, I live in a sweet apartment. I love it -- I love my kitchen, my marble counters, my gas stove, my track-lighting and philodendrons and the pothos in the bathroom, my blue and green and yellow bath-rug, my lavender pillow-cases, my chartruese sheets. I live in a new space, as a new person.
But I'm still shaken loose and confused sometimes. It will happen again in summer, again in fall, again (and probably worse) during the approaching winter. And then I'll be mostly free of it all.
Today I was ruminating over my lost relationship with CB. It's seasonal -- all grief. You feel it anew in each season. Today I dug the weeds out of the still blooming daffodils SK brought me before she left and I planted, along side those daffodils, a few bulbs of rooting garlic. I smelled the air and flashed immediately back to the previous springs spent with CB. Working in the garden. Mowing the lawn. Last year we turned this ancient, rusty wheel-barrow into an herb-planter. We parked it in the full sun on the side of the house and planted it with basil and dill, which *thrived* and grew like we never imagined.
Yes, I'm aware that I miss my life there more than I actually miss her. It doesn't matter. It still feels sad and disorienting. Looking back today, I'm still stunned that my life is no longer there, in that house, with her. Right until the very end, I never imagined I would leave. I had not been looking for the escape hatch in my relationship with CB, even as things started going downhill. It was only utter desperation that drove me away in the end. The drinking and everything else became so unbelievably extreme. And now, I live in a sweet apartment. I love it -- I love my kitchen, my marble counters, my gas stove, my track-lighting and philodendrons and the pothos in the bathroom, my blue and green and yellow bath-rug, my lavender pillow-cases, my chartruese sheets. I live in a new space, as a new person.
But I'm still shaken loose and confused sometimes. It will happen again in summer, again in fall, again (and probably worse) during the approaching winter. And then I'll be mostly free of it all.
posted by reasonably prudent poet at 4:20 PM
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