There is a time for departure even when there’s no certain place to go. Tennessee Williams

• Prompt A: Talk about breaking someone else’s heart, or having your own heart broken.

I had to leave. It was time. He was never going the direction I was going, though he tried. I was never going the direction he was going, though I tried. I saw him as going backward or staying in place. He thought the same of me.

I wanted to be a mother.He did not want to be a father.

I loved him when I left. I loved him as I cried myself to sleep every night for months, for a year. He was the best, kindest man I’d loved and though we never married I was more married to him than to the man I had married before him.

I didn’t eat anything but toasted bread with tomato sauce and shredded cheese. Every night, every night for months. I didn’t eat lunch. I drank too much and too often. In the dark. I’d lost my best friend and the love of my life or so I thought. I’d trusted him more than any other. He had known everything and still loved me.

I went to bed with my clothes on, it was too hard to find pajamas. I moved into my own apartment. It was too big and I didn’t decorate it for a year. I slept on someone else’s bed, in a teenage girl’s idea of what a garden bedroom looked like. I think I watched tv. I re read all my books. ALL of them. Even the ones in middle English.

I slept and when I couldn’t I stared. And one day

One day it just hurt a little less.

And then a little less.

And then I went on horrible dates. My first date –I hated him so much my cat hated him. I was so nervous I drank too much too fast and threw up on the sidewalk and I was SO relieved that that date could be over and I could go back to sleeping.

But I went out again. And I had several boyfriends. And I had some boys who weren’t friends but who were quite nice naked.

And then I got tired of that too. One night I decided that I was ok–going out with friends, working and doing things on my own. Sleeping with my cats.

I started decorating my house.

And then I met the man I’ve been married to for almost 12 years now. And had the most amazing wonderful daughter ever in the entire world.

As wrenching as that broken heart was, it led me to him so I’d go through it again if I knew the road was surely going that same direction.