I’ve become fairly superstitious when it comes to making sure the Dude is out of my life and out of my house. I set fire to my dreams of our life together months ago –

When I cleaned out a closet and found more things I thought were long gone – those landed on the fire as well. I wanted them gone.

Today as Alex and I cleaned the (expletive deleted) out of the house, I opened a cabinet I never use – there sat things I’d left there for him almost a year ago – when I was making sure I had a place for him in my new life.

Rather than set yet another fire, I swept the stuff out of the cabinet and moved on with my cleaning.

I’m still left with the uneasy feeling that as long as I have things of him or his energy or my (long dead) desire for a future him laying around that I’m throwing up some kind of road block against anything I actually want now, people and experiences that are actually good for me.

It’s a little crazy making to have to keep trying to disconnect from him – I don’t want him, don’t want to see him, and one of these days when he’s repaid all the money he owes, I will take that last breath and blow it out with total relief that I am unbound from him completely. A quarter of a century and finally there is nothing I want more from him than what is mine and for him go away. Far far away and out of my life.

I’ve come a long way.