i'm ok

Hey, I'm ok. I can breathe now.

I don't think I took a deep breath all day yesterday. I'm not sure I breathed at all. Maybe I was just holding it from 7:15 a.m. when all the shit started until I lay down in my own bed last night and not the spare at my mom's -- a place in which I fully expected to end up yesterday afternoon. I've been divorced once, I know what it's like to look down the barrel of that gun. Which is perhaps why I defended a marriage I sometimes find, frankly, indefensible. And why I think I'm crazy but also crazy like a fox.

Nonetheless, I think I'm OK. All the parts are still here. So family and friends, please do not worry.

I'm heading out of town again which means an uncharacteristic few days' silence for me while I travel out of town for meetings and then come back to enjoy (hopefully) my birthday weekend. I treated myself to a nice lunch today -- and a cannoli, which are hard to come by in a place like KC. Too much nutmeg in the shell and maraschino cherries no longer hold the same allure they did when I was 5 but still a nice 3 p.m. snack. All things considered I feel -- weirdly cheerful. Not "I hit the lottery" cheerful but "I won $2 on a scratch-off ticket" cheerful.

And when it's very quiet, I have these images in my head -- of work husband #3 standing in my office door yesterday saying "Don't you leave, don't you leave, don't do it. Don't you do it." And T with tears in his eyes and his voice thick in his throat, finally, finally saying he would make good on his promise not to quit our marriage. Those are what stays with me from yesterday and they'll be what I think about tonight as I lay down in my own bed again. And probably when I lay down a few hundred miles away from my bed tomorrow night. Actually I think they're going to be there for a long time.