“Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay.”

This was a part of our marriage vows, and the words I had engraved on S’s wedding band.  We said these words in unison, gazing straight into each others eyes, voices catching with emotion.  If you could have seen us on that day, you would have seen two people oh-so-young and full of love that we were almost bursting with it.  Full of hope and dreams of the future; flying high on pure love and gratitude to the universe for bringing us together.

Last night I took off my rings: Engagement ring, accepted through tears of joy over nine years ago.  Wedding ring, placed on my finger on a magical day in the summer of 1999 by a man who loved me more than life.  Anniversary band, given after five years of marriage while I sat on the couch with a horrid head cold moaning about how my illness ruined our plans to celebrate.

Eight years of marriage.  Almost eleven years as a couple.  A million memories of our life together.  The symbolic representation of all that love and commitment now carefully placed in the dark corner of a sock drawer.

Is there any wonder I am so deeply sad today?

S. removed his ring over a week ago.  I’ve taken my rings off briefly several times since this began journey began  - when I was out and wanted to escape my life for a while or when I was with someone and wearing the rings was a reminder of everything I was doing wrong -  but I’ve always put them back on.  Every single time, the guilt that made me place them back on my finger was a mirror image of the guilt that made me take them off in the first place.

It has been increasingly difficult for me to wear them recently.  They have felt heavy and foreign on my finger.  A reminder that I was a hypocrite, a cheater, a woman who betrayed every promise she made when those rings were accepted.   They used to be a part of me, something I wasn’t even conscious of most of the time.  Lately I have been aware of them almost every minute of the day – sometimes just with a sense of discomfort, other times with the feeling that they were burning a brand into my fingers, sometimes with a overwhelming sense of panic and fear, and always with such a depth of sadness that I lack the ability to reduce it to mere words.

But yet, there was a comfort that came from them too, and a reluctance to remove them for long.   This reluctance was born both from a desire to minimize the pain I caused (am causing) to my husband, and a reluctance on my part to commit to the next step in this journey.   An unwillingness to admit what this step really means.  I can choose to put those rings back on at any point, but I cannot take away the feelings inside me that caused me to remove them in the first place.   Both of the choices - the choice to take the rings off and the choice to put them back on - feel equally weighted and equally wrong.  One choice wrong because of what is, and one choice wrong because of what was supposed to be.

Last night, when I took them off, it was actually just a random moment.  When I started to remove them I wasn’t consciously aware of the decision I was making, but by the time I had twisted the final ring from my finger I knew.  I slipped them into my purse, and as they left my hand I felt the finality of the moment.  I knew that I couldn’t put them back on.  I knew that they were a symbol of something that I had already irrevocably damaged, a symbol of someone I could no longer claim to be.

That moment represented the first time I truly admitted to myself that there is no going back to what was.  I can’t go back and recapture what our marriage used to be.  I cannot go back and be the person I always thought I was.  There is no way to turn back the clock, to undo what has been done, to un-say what has been said.  And even if there was, I don’t think that I could make the choice to do it.  Not now, not after everything that has happened, not after all I have experienced and learned about myself.  No matter how much my heart is breaking into countless tiny pieces in this moment, I have to step solidly into this space – as solidly as I can when I feel like crumpling to the ground with every step I take.

I cannot go backwards into the comforting familiarity of the past and I cannot remain stagnant in the present.  It is the only authentic choice – but it is a choice that carries overwhelming heartache as its near constant companion.

This is where I am.  This is who I am.  This is not going to change.  This is reality, and this reality does cannot mesh with the vows I took eight years ago.   I fervently wish there was some way it could - I wish that right now with an ache in my heart, a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes – because I have no idea where to go from here.  I have no idea what to do next.  I thought I knew what my life would be, and now I don’t feel like I know anything at all.  I am frightened beyond all level of previously experienced fear.  I miss my husband.  I miss my soul mate.  I miss my best friend.  I miss my life.

I have never felt so alone.

And so here I sit today, on an otherwise ordinary day that is not really ordinary in the least.  As I type this post I am aware of the emptiness of my ring finger, just as aware of the absence of my rings as I have recently been aware of their presence.  It is almost as if the lack of their weight on my finger has carries a weight of its own. 

On random moments throughout the day, I feel their phantom presence, like the ghost of marriage past.  And I remember how my anniversary band always slid around because it was too big and we never got around to having it sized, how my diamond engagement ring always caught on my the edge of my pockets, how my wedding band had worn so unevenly thin in the back that I sometimes wondered if it would one day crack into pieces.  If I touch the spot where they used to be, I feel a ridge of smooth skin where they have left their imprint on my finger, and I wonder, how long it will take before that too is gone?  And what of their imprint on my heart?  Universe willing; I think I’d like to keep that.

Mostly I sit here and wonder how on earth I got to this point, and how on earth I manage to go on from here.