Page 77 of Forsaking All Others

All I know is that I like waking up and finding Maverick on my couch.

I like watching him brush his teeth with Shepard and Theo every morning. I like listening to him and Tara plan their future TikTok videos over breakfast and I really like the sound of everyone’s laughter around the dinner table.

I haven’t had that in four days, though, and if you haven’t noticed—I’m starting to panic. Which is crazy because I should be consumed with grief. I’m a widow after all. Widows cry. They lock themselves in their bedrooms, shut out the rest of the world, and they obsess over how they’re going to get by without the person they were supposed to spend their entire life loving.

I did that once.

I did it when I divorced Maverick.

Every day after I dropped the kids at school, I came home, and I cried. I would pull shoeboxes full of photographs and relive every moment of our life together. I’d watch reruns ofLaw & Order SVUbecause that was our show and I turned on the radio and played all our favorite songs. I went out and bought a bottle of Maverick’s cologne because I knew eventually his scent would fade from my sheets and I didn’t want to forget the scent.

Even after I started dating Colt, there were times when he’d drop me off after a beautiful date and I’d crawl into bed and I would just cry myself to sleep because though I smiled and forced myself to participate in the conversation, my heart was not present. I didn’t want to date. I didn’t want to start over, and I really didn’t want anyone else’s love.

I had love—the kind of love that people spend their whole lives wishing they will get to experience—and I knew, as great as Colt was, I’d never have that love with him. It’s not something you find twice in a single lifetime and anyone who tells you differently is kidding themselves.

I think that’s the problem. I’ve been kidding myself, accepting something just for the sake of having it. You see after the grieving, comes the uncertainty. Doubt creeps in and you start to think no one will ever love you again. That you’re damaged goods.

You spend twelve years with someone thinking you’re going to die in each other’s arms after sharing a long life, and then suddenly you’re hysterical crying, pumping your own gas, realizing you’re not going to die in each other’s arms. You’re a single mom of two and life just got ten times harder.

Your kids miss their dad, they don’t understand why they only see him on the weekends or why they all of a sudden have two houses, and they blame you for everything. You don’t want to project your shit onto them or paint a bad picture of their dad—he’s still their dad, so you just keep pushing through. You swallow the hurt and pretend like everything is fine. You are superwoman and you’ve got everything under control.

But you’re tired.

You’re so fucking tired.

And you’re angry.

You’re angry at yourself and at the man you married, because you both could’ve had such a beautiful life. You could’ve given your kids everything and I don’t mean materialistic shit—by now you’ve realized the expensive bag your husband bought you for Christmas and that gorgeous diamond ring he gave you after you delivered his baby doesn’t mean anything. But that time he held your son’s hand when he was in the hospital and you couldn’t because you were too distraught—that right there was everything.

You were a team.

Two people who fell in love and balanced the scales when things got hard.

We could’ve given our kids that. We could’ve given them something they’d hold sacred. Something they’d search for themselves when it was time to give their heart away.

Knowing you didn’t do that, that you had it to give and you didn’t, well, it fucks with you and then a nice man comes along. He doesn’t care that you have two kids or that you’re still madly in love with your ex-husband. He’s never had that once in a lifetime love, so he gambles with his heart and you let him. You accept the life he wants to give you and the love he has for you and you try to give him what he needs. You sell the house that you love, the one that has markings of your children’s growth spurts on the wall inside the pantry and a million memories of the love you lost. You marry him and take his name, but you leave a credit card or two with your ex-husband’s name because you can’t let go. And even though you swore you were done having kids, you see how good he is to yours, so you give him one of his own.

You make it work.

You wake every day and you try to be better.

You try to love him like he loves you.

You try and you try and then one day you’re sitting in a trailer, removing the wedding band he put on your finger, realizing you’re no match for fate. You glance out the window, at the motorcycle that belongs to your ex-husband and you stop wondering why you’re not acting like a proper widow—whatever that is.

That’s another thing.

Can we stop all the ideology?

I’m not a bad person because I never stopped loving my husband. I don’t require the pity of the woman who has been happily married to her high school sweetheart for years, nor do I require the pity of the woman who pretends on Facebook that she’s happy in her marriage but is secretly having an affair with her mechanic because her husband is a giant douche and she doesn’t like him much less love him. I got married to the love of my life and we got divorced. Shit happens. I got remarried. I tried to move on, and I failed. Colt died and society expects me to wear black and cry.

But what about my heart?

My heart has expectations too and I’ve been ignoring my heart’s expectations even before my husband was murdered.

You want to judge me for something?

Judge me for that.

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