There is this man that I do not talk to at all. He used to know so many things about me. He knew more about me than most of my friends. I do not like this man. I actually don’t even know where he lives right now, and I don’t care. I would probably be a bit sad if he died, but not heartbroken.

He has some pictures of me, from a long time ago. I really should get them from him. He used to know my parents; he used to know my sister, although she never really approved of him. He was with me when I rented my first apartment, when I moved from Mississippi to LA. He actually encouraged me when I got my first job, and when I used to complain that I didn’t like it, he tried to comfort me, but insisted that I stick with it, because I did not have a lot of money, and jobs were hard to come by.

We used to love to watch movies together, and we both liked country music, although I prefer classical music today. Just before Christmas he would decorate the tree, because he was so much more artistic than I was. I am still not artistic, and it would have been nice to have someone with his artistic talent last Christmas. Yes, someone with his talent, but not him.

Did I mention the photographs? Oh yes, I did. So he has this photograph of me when I skied for the first time. I was petrified, and he said “come on, you can do it”, and I did. We went to Big Bear, and we stayed in a cabin. You don’t ski in Mississippi. Then there is the picture of my first cat. He was the one who suggested the name Snow, because it was so white. I know that he has many pictures of me and Snow. He really loved the cat.

And did I mention the fact that once upon a time we were very much in love? I guess not. Well, we were. And then we got married. Oh, you did not figure out that I am talking about my ex, huh? I thought that you therapists are a smart bunch. Strange to think that you can be so close to someone one day, and then they evaporate from your life.

It all started with my recent move. I had to pack, throw things away, go through stuff and make decisions. There was a box in my daughter’s room, and I started going through it, thinking that it was some childhood memorabilia, but I was wrong. I completely forgot that I put it there after the divorce. I knew that she was going away, so I put it in her closet, cause I needed not to think about it. Far from the eye, far from the heart, isn’t that what they say?

So I found letters, pictures, awards, which he got many of, and just stuff. My first instinct was to close it and just move on to the next task. I just could not bring myself to look at it. But then I said to myself, “Stop being Scarlett, and make a decision”. You see, I wanted to avoid dealing with it, even though it’s been there for seven years. So I was thinking that I would just take it with me to my new home, and store it in the garage, and when I retire, I would go through everything. But there was this other part gnawing at me, and it told me that I have to look inside. This is the part of me that is brave, sometimes masochistic.

So I sat on the carpet, and started going through everything. I was not emotionally flooded, which is what I was afraid of, but I definitely felt wistful. I found some things that I completely forgot about, and others that I remembered very well. But the thing that most disturbed me was the fact that I spent fifteen years of my life with this man, and I don’t even know his current address. If I were to get a letter addressed to him, I would not know where to send it. I would need to ask my daughter.

And this is what is so perplexing to me. What is this thing that we humans are capable of? How can we be in love, be intimate, have children together, go through triumphs and losses, buy the first house, the first car, the first couch, move together to a new city, state, country, and do it all with the only person that I do not talk to? When did my heart decide that the witness to the most significant fifteen years of my life is not worthy of a conversation? And why? Why did I decide that? And where did I stuff the memories? You see, I ‘get’ defense mechanisms, so if I have to struggle with bad, painful memories; my defense mechanisms are there to protect me, right? But what about the good ones? There were good ones, and even great ones. Granted, not many after the first five years, but even so.

I think that initially I stopped talking to him because of the pain and the anger and the disappointment. But it has been ten years already. Maybe I don’t talk to him at all, because if we really talk about the good times, the pain will be more unbearable? Maybe it will not only be about how he disappointed me, but it will also be about how I failed the relationship? Oh, it is so easy to blame the other. When we went to couple’s therapy, before our separation, I insisted that the therapist fix him. After all, I was willing to discuss everything, while he just wanted to go out with his friends, play basketball with all those younger guys, and then he started to run, and then there were those marathons, and then he was really never home. Between work and sports he was just not there.

But I did not stop to ask myself, why he is not there, why would he rather do everything but be home. I just kept on blaming him for this and for that, and told him that he is a bad person, a bad husband, a bad father. You don’t have to be a genius, nor a shrink, to figure out that he stayed out even more. I just did not stop to look at myself! I was just razor sharp! It was all his fault!

And I started hating him. I did not want to be touched by him, I ridiculed him, I put him down. Whatever he did was stupid. What he thought of was stupid. His political views were stupid. His hobbies were stupid. You get the gist, right? There was the day that I talked to a friend of mine, and she said that just before her divorce, she could not stand the hair on the arm of her husband. That says it all.

The truth is that all in all he was a nice man. He was not mean on purpose, but insensitive. Actually, I was mean on purpose, but I felt justified. He did not do anything outrageously bad, but I treated him as if he were bad. We would fight over the most ludicrous issues, but also, if I have to be honest, there were important things, because we had different perceptions about life. You see, in retrospect, I think that we should have never gotten married, because we were good separately, but not a good combination. But, and it is a big “but”, why does this justify not talking to him? I have female friends whose ex’s do not want to talk to them. So why don’t we want to talk to someone who was the closest person to us at some point in our life? What is that part we do not want to look at?

I think that it is the fear of the flood - the flood of emotions, memories, interactions, stories, the events that he knows better than anyone else. He knows better than anyone else! No one knows better than him how we bought the first car. It was a Plymouth Barracuda. Blue. And he made book shelves from scraps of wood. We were poor, but felt rich sometimes. I started baking. I do not like to cook, but I developed an interest in uninteresting things, such as cooking and baking, and I did quite well. When our daughter was born, he was there, and he cried while I was in labor. And we so loved her together. Of course, we have hundreds of pictures, which we would share with whoever was interested or not.

There was this Greek movie with Melina Mercouri “Never On Sunday”, where she kept on saying that at the end they will all go to the beach or something like that. Well, we did not. Our movie did not end on the beach. It ended in quiet rooms suffocated by roaring silence. And I can state now, that the pain is about dreams that did not come true. The pain is about being young and hopeful and not knowing that this movie is not going to have a happy ending. The pain is about not reading my mind, not becoming the person who I wanted him to be. Not that he ever promised that he will become one. I was just hoping. So I don’t talk to him not because of the anger or pain, but because of the old love, that I don’t want to remember, and the disappointment in myself, not him. And I prefer to block the good memories, the moments that only he knew, because it is too painful to realize that somewhere in this world, there is a witness to my old life, and I could not even manage to be his friend.