Shades of Then

Today, I suddenly realised that I have been on my own for 13 years.
2004, was the year of my great independence...how can I forget. My world centred pin-pointed focused on my person seemingly only a yard in diametre. I was all me...I couldn't focus on anything else.
I felt like I was walking through a tunnel with no lights and I was just feeling my way around. I couldn't eat or drink...forced myself to swallow food or water only when I feel my head go dizzy from lack of food.
Within that period of time, I would sit in front of my PC and stare at the screen looking at photographs in images for hours, not really looking at anything. I have always believed in 'till death do us part' and I thought he did too.  I went down memory lane to look at all the mistakes I might have made to make him leave. There were many and various shortcomings. Did I forget to buy his cigarettes once, and disappoint him? Did I forget his birthday once, because I was too engrossed with work?
On days that I could function at that time, I went to work and looked around at my co-workers. Did I get too close to any of the boys and men there to merit his rejection? I wasn't pretty enough, that I knew. I was always a bit of a Tomboy. There I was, looking at my unpainted fingernails, ruefully. I was so focused on my shortcomings, that I didn't feel like I was deserving of happiness.
I was in this emotionally debilitating condition for a good three months before I began to recover. Within that period of time, I lost 25 kiloes, my hair started to fall and I slept only two to three hours a night. If you think a broken heart was merely a state of emotions, you are wrong...I ached all over my body and I suffered high fever many times.
I used earphones where ever I went, stuck to an MP3...remember those little things that you saved music in and stick in your pocket...yes that's the one. I even used the earplug-type earphones in bed, slept with it through the night...for many many nights. It gave me vertigo in the end.
Almost three months later, I was sitting outside the house. The wind was blowing hard and the petals of the bougainvillea trees along the road were being blown away. They were swirling in the air, not one or two, but heaps of them...red and orange blown up into the air and away. As usual I was listening to music and hurting and hurting...but something was different that day, the shower of flower petals was so beautiful that I kept staring at them. I saw things beyond the flowers, the green tree tops, the sky...somehow I felt like the tunnel was coming to an end.
A couple of days later, I was at the office as usual looking at other people's write ups. I overheard the typists talking about a colleague....and the sentence that really jolted me was 'She did all that for a man...?'
Was I torturing myself and for what...for a man who didn't care....? Who was at that precise moment, maybe, pleasuring another woman? I suddenly felt this worm of anger wriggle up from my chest and bitter bile coming up my throat.
I went out for dinner with a colleague and a good friend that evening. She was always asking me to go out to dinner with her, but I couldn't go out before that. Misery was my companion.
However that evening we went out to a quiet restaurant and talked and talked for almost three hours.  She had gone through the same thing a couple of years back; her husband had slept and sired a baby with their maid.
I will always remember what she said, "Leaving you is his loss, not yours. You are still young and you will find someone who appreciate you, more."
One day, I realised that I no longer think of him everyday.The healing began rapidly after that. Nowadays, bringing up the image of his face is an effort.