the breakup box.

He said I’d just be ready one day, but I didn’t believe him.

My counselor, I mean.

I nodded and went through all the motions of agreement, but I could hardly imagine it. I guess because I’d never been there before. It’s like trying to describe the color purple when you’re blind; when you’ve never seen color anyway. You could talk about a mixture of red and blue, how it mingles and fades into something else entirely, but that has no relevance because you’ve never seen that either. You might as well be the President talking about a mixture of peace and healthcare reform; they are just words, and once said too much without the actual idea it represents, they lose their power. And then peace and healthcare reform become like red and blue; they mingle and fade into something else entirely. Though I’m not sure it’s purple.

There’s this song we sing in church, I Can Only Imagine. It’s a beautiful song that frames the afterlife in lyrics and the key of D. Well, it’s in D when I sing it, anyway. And I have this vague notion that the time after death will be good, that I will finally and once and for all be hidden from enemies that hate me for no other reason than God loves me. And yes, the fact that what I do, whether I ever say another kind word again, has absolutely no bearing on either of those–the love of a God and the hatred of another–is stunning.

But the afterlife.

I am going to be honest now and say that the very notion of it scares me. I’m not saying I know it won’t be good; I am simply saying that I don’t know it at all, and I have a long history of fearing the unknown.

But just because you cannot imagine something does not mean that a). it will not come to pass or b). it will not be okay. Because it’s true, my counselor was right. I was driving in the car, on my way to the gym, and all of the sudden I just knew I was ready to move on with my life.

And I stepped into the unimaginable like it was an old pair of sneakers. Or at least pretended to. And I looked around for someone to pronounce the Time of Death, but nobody was there; so instead I texted my brother Jason that it was time. I even used the d word.

And no, not that d word.

I am talking about divorce, but now that you mention it, the other d word could have been appropriate too.

But how?

How do you go from both saying I do to one saying I didn’t to me now saying I don’t?

Beats the heck out of me.

But this is my journey and I pinch myself often, but not in the pinch me, I’m dreaming sort of way; more like pinch me, this absurdity just can’t be real.

Not when it involves a link to a site that my friend sent me, after we talked about how I was thinking about selling my rings:

outofyourlife.com

I’m not even joking. They send you a box, a breakup box, and once you fill it with your unwanted jewelry, you mail it back to them and then wait for a check to arrive once they’ve sold it for you. If you think you could get more than what they got for it, you have the option of returning the check in exchange for the jewelry.

Nice. Low risk. I’m not in the riskiest mood right now. You don’t generally see a lot of survivors playing Russian Roulet; you just don’t.

My breakup box arrived just this afternoon. And I cannot believe how ridiculous the name of that thing is; cannot help but like to say it, because WTF. The F stands for freak, in this case. As in I sometimes freak out when I take a long hard look at the landscape of my life.

Or maybe, just maybe the F doesn’t stand for freak.

But if you ever wondered what a breakup box looks like, now you know.

And I know, I was kind of let down by how normal it looked too. I mean, really, not even a broken heart? Or even a cartoon black widow spider, happily munching away on her mate?

But then I opened it.

And saw this.

And couldn’t help but laugh.
At least it wasn’t Girls Rule! Boys Drool!, I guess.
But again, WTF.
How in the world is this my life?