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The Wild Edge of Love Part 8
The Summer after the Bomb Hit
It was a waste of a perfectly good summer. But, perhaps, a blessing that it happened during COVID. I hit rock bottom in late May and have still to find my solid footing, after a year of constantly retraumatizing events. I hardly got into the gardens to work. I wanted to hide in my house. So, COVID came at a great time for me. I didn’t want to see people, and couldn’t anyway. With reticence, I got to know my boyfriend’s parents and kids, always hoping that none of us were sick. We weren’t. But, it was all risky-pandemic, new relationship, evil almost-ex husband… I didn’t feel committed to anything but my kiddos. My own happiness was always optional, not a given.
On top of it all, my business partner left me to work alone, and took his thirty-thousand person email list with him. It took months to get any kind of settlement at all. That event alone will take almost five years to recover from. And, the clock ticks.
The almost-ex disappeared. He didn’t text the kids for months. After he got a lawyer, we ceased communicating at all. I felt like I had been hit by a truck, over and over. I really had no idea how right I had been about his narcissism and greed, how they both went hand in hand, and how completely gullible and impressionable he was. The ego-stroking he got from his few friends, his sister, and his…
