Disconnect

As I try to process the divorce and my grief associated with it, I feel like I'm doing a puzzle with some extra challenges.  Some of the pieces are obvious.  They represent objective facts and the pieces of my perspective that I feel comfortable with.  Some of them are completely missing - my ex-husband has them because they represent the parts he never told me.  And some of them have been distorted or covered up because that is what our mind does sometimes - those pieces are spending a lot of time tumbling around in my brain.  Sometimes I have an epiphany or find a journal entry that gives clarity to one of those pieces and allows me to fit in the puzzle.  But sometimes I think those pieces can get even more distorted or obscured as my mind works on them.  And I might even at times think I've gained some clarity on a piece only to later realize it is in the wrong place because I didn't quite get it right yet.

Today I stumbled upon a subfolder (it was buried a couple down and hidden) in my e-mail called "Love".  In it were countless e-mails from my ex-husband filled with so many loving messages.  And these weren't messages someone just pretend and make up.  They were heartfelt, detailed, and talked of dreams and the life we were living.  

In one series, we went back and forth about a pair of ducks that were spending time in our yard.  The ducks were always together, the male following the female around.  My ex would always comment that they were just like us and so on various mornings if one of us spotted them after the other had already left for work, we would share those experiences in these e-mails.

Then there were the e-mails of all the research I did for his Dad - related to nursing homes, estate planning attorneys, questions to ask to advocate for him, etc. and my ex's appreciation for that work.

And then there was one where he said his barber (who has cut his hair forever) who told him he was really lucky because he married a "smart perfect woman" and he told me he agreed.

I just can't believe he made all this up.  He had to have felt something.  So what the hell happened in 2024?  What changed?

The e-mails stop in 2019.  I don't think that is because the messages themselves stopped.  At some point, we got better cell reception at work and switched to text messages.  

So as I process what I saw in just a sampling of those e-mails, I find myself taking a few pieces out that I think I might have originally put in the wrong places but not really having any new pieces to put in.