Shattered

My partner of nearly 20 years and I are splitting up.

For the bulk of the week, we have been discussing things that would have been better said days...weeks..months....years ago.

We are not nasty...we do not fight...we work to not do more damage than this will already do to ourselves, our family, our friends.

We hold on to one another and cry..wishing we were anywhere but in this space. Hating the pain that we bring to one another...hating the work that goes into surviving from one hour to the next. When we can gather our breath; we speak of the tasks of untangling; who gets which chair...where does that lamp go....and at the same time, not really believing that we utter these words to one another....feeling like we have slipped into some alternate, surreal universe where everything is like an Escher drawing and nothing quite makes sense when you really look at it.

I google "how to survive a break up" sites.....although the truth of the matter is that this is not my first break up.

But what I have learned is, they ALL feel like the first time.