This is me...finishing.

I'm going to ponder over this one more word, and then I am going to be done with sad posts, at least hopefully.  It has been good therapy for me to write my feelings down, to ramble, to just get it out.  Thanks for sticking with me through the depressing stuff...hopefully, like all of you have said, it will get better from here.  Yes.  It WILL get better from here. 
Finish(ed) is another word I've not really ever thought a whole lot about.  Unfinished is a word I've probably thought even less about.  As I was working on separating things, I walked backwards into time and revisted nearly three years of my life.  I saw the things we had made, the things we had purchased, the things that we did, a million-zillion memories were dancing through my head, faster, really, than what I could keep up with.  I didn't allow myself to ponder over them too much, for fear of crying another river. 

There were his softball pants.  I won't be seeing any of his games now.  Unfinished.  There was this table we were going to work on.  Unfinished.  There were chairs we needed to recover.  Unfinished.  There was his lamp collection.  Unfinished.  (A collection never really finishes, does it?)  His steins. Another collection.  Unfinished.  My pottery collection.  Unfinished.  The swimming pool he just bought for the kids to use this summer, full of fresh water, sitting there, unused.  Unfinished.  My building, I was working on getting it in order, and I was *almost* there.  Unfinished.  The tomatoes and the garden that I won't be able to gather from.  Unfinished.  The sound of him in his garage, next to my building.  Unfinished.  Pulling in the driveway and watching the dogs come out to greet me.  Unfinished.  The projects we had planned.  Unfinished.  The furniture I haven't gotten to paint yet.  Unfinished.  The garage sale we needed to have.  Unfinished. 

All those things, material and otherwise, kept that word rolling around in my head as I looked for things, packed other things, stacked and restacked totes, fought the wasps in the nest I happened to get into, while I decided to take or leave things.  I will have to come back and clean out my things that are in the buildings here.  I will have to come back and forth to get furniture and all the things from the house situated.  All those things are unfinished. 

Yes, I'm crying.  Why?  Because all those things that are unfinished are the things that make  up my life; our every-day living.  I wasn't finished with our life, our relationship, our home, our projects, our things, our love.  I wasn't finished loving Mark Perry.  I wasn't finished being Mark Perry's wife.  Why did he have to be finished?  It's not a good feeling, the feeling of being discarded, thrown away, not wanted.  How do you be finished when you're not?  You're supposed to finish what you start. Right? 

A friend of mine sent me a link to something that he thought would be uplifting to me, and it was.  It was Olympians.  Short clips of them, of how they had gotten where they are, and about their mothers.  He meant for me to watch only one, but I found myself watching all 28 of them.  Over and over again, like salt on a wound, were the words, from nearly every Olympian:  finish what you start.  So, I am going to finish what was started.  As soon as I am able to detach everything from here, this home that I'm still calling my home, when it's not, I will close that book.  I will put it on the shelf next to Volume One.  There it will sit:  Volume Two.  And I will begin afresh with Volume Three.  I'm not sure that I want Volume Three to be the last one; I just want it to be way different in the ending than Volumes One and Two!  Stories are supposed to have *happy* endings, right?  You know...and they lived happily ever after?  I don't want the Encyclopedia of Abby Jean Fields Key Perry to run out of volumes until it reaches many happily ever afters...but I also don't need to add a thousand more words to my name, or even one, for that matter.  It's long enough as it is.  :)  But I am all of those people, all of those.  I cannot remove any part of it because I would be removing a part of me.  So they shall stay, all of them, and depending on who I am talking to, which Volume of Abby they "belong" to, will be how I introduce myself.  Always have.  Always will.

So, I'm finished with the sad posts, and the what-if's, and the what-could-have-been, and the if-when's, the guilt, the looking back. I'm finished with the mourning (ok, I never will be exactly finished with that, but you know what I mean).  I'm finished looking at things as they were, and I'm going to start looking forward, at a promising future, a new home, meeting new people, making new, fun memories. 

Come along with me, and let's see what we can get into.