Bennett — Age 25
I tossed the keys on the counter and flipped on the TV to combat the silence of my empty house while I sifted through the mail.
Most of the pile was advertisements and credit card offers, but I stilled when I reached a letter from the New York State Supreme Court County Clerk’s Office.
I’m not sure how long I stood there staring at the envelope before I found the courage to open it.
Exactly as I’d thought, it was the signed divorce decree from the judge.
I dropped onto a chair, the weight of my body suddenly too heavy to support.
It had been six months since I left New York.
Six miserable months without Maven in my life.
I had known letting her go would be hard.
I just hadn’t realize how hard. She’d been so fully ingrained into every aspect of my life that without her, I felt like a hollowed-out piece of driftwood.
Aimless. Purposeless. It didn’t help that everywhere I went, every single thing reminded me of her.
But I didn’t regret it. I wouldn’t let myself.
Through my mom, I’d heard that after graduation, Maven had gone to Europe to spend her summer attending festivals, just like she’d wanted.
In the fall, she’d be touring with a string quartet.
Maven was living her best life, and I was…
well… I was trying my hardest to be happy for her.
She deserved every good thing, which is why I’d left.
But that didn’t mean I didn’t wish that the life we’d planned would have been enough.
That the dream we’d once shared could have been as fulfilling to her as any stage, destination, or opportunity.
Clearly, that wasn’t the case, and now I needed to figure out how to be okay with it.
Maybe the answer was doing what Maven was doing.
She was living out her dreams without looking back.
Proving to everyone she was not only okay without me, but she was thriving.
Something that was probably a whole lot easier to manage considering her dreams didn’t revolve around a person who was no longer a part of her life.
But maybe that’s what I needed to lean into.
Maven was accomplishing things because she no longer had me holding her back.
I would accomplish things to prove to myself that this life was one worth choosing.
That I hadn’t made a mistake in leaving her.
But in the meantime, this house was too darn quiet. I needed a dog.