The happy memories

There aren't any. 

My therapist said last week that she thought that I should be trying harder to remember the happy things.

She was wrong.

And it's not that there weren't happy things.  It's just that there are two deep and terrible ways in which she was so, so wrong.

First, knowing that I had the happy things but do not have them now does not make me feel in any way better.  It intensifies and deepens the sense of loss, beyond all measure.  Stacy, who lost her husband, too, understands that perfectly.

But the other thing is that there are no memories that are free of bad things.  Ironically, Michael said this to me about his childhood, too... I'd forgotten that until just now.

What am I supposed to think about?  The trip to Chincoteague, in which we had to drive around endlessly because there was nowhere that we could figure out that he could eat?  And then, we went to Baltimore to see my dying mother, and he got furiously angry because I wasn't paying attention to him?  Was that the trip that we got stuck in the elevator, because I begged him to come up to the apartment with me, because I couldn't bear to be alone?  And then we got stuck in the elevator, and he was furious with me, and the only thing that saved any of it was that there was someone else there, so he had to be civil?

Or maybe our wedding day, when I had to coax him out of the house, take him to McDonald's to eat something so that he would be able to go on with the rest of the day?

Or the trips to Maine, when he spent the whole time sulking and bitching about how things were?  (in all fairness, the last one... the last good trip... that was ok.  But it was the beginning of the end.

Should I remember his gratitude when he was so ill, in the beginning?  Or him blaming me because he couldn't remember the things that had happened?  How wonderful and supportive I was?  Until I couldn't be, when everything became my fault?  How can I remember the good things when I find the shards of writing on my computer, and they are all about how miserable I was?  And they date back a decade, to before we were ever married, ever living together.

Yes, it was my fault, too.  I walked into it.  I should have known.  I should have walked away, although I still don't know how I could have.  Although I suppose, in a way, I did at the end.  And it is tragic.  And yes, he was a lovely, charming, loving man, who tried extraordinarily hard... except when he didn't.  Except when he was bitter and cruel and childish and petty and suspicious and jealous of everyone who wasn't me, and controlling, and unsympathetic... and ill.  The knife at the end, the knife that twists it all around and makes it impossible to see clearly.

There will never be a way to understand him, to understand the reasons why I did this, why he did this, or anything.

I just want to forget.  I want it all to be over.  I want a new life, and I want the old one whitewashed away.  I don't think that's wrong.

This week, I've been slipping his ring on my finger, and saying the things that I would say to him.  And then I feel heavy and sick and weighed down with it all.  I am not going to do that any more.  I am putting all the rings away, and I am forgetting.