Who is this me?

We are now in the midst of the second summer without you.  Life is so not the same anymore.

In the quiet moments, which they almost all are, I find myself realizing that I feel I no longer belong anywhere.  

For ten and a half years I belonged in AR raising two small children, teaching them how to read and write and do puzzles.  Teaching them about the earth and nature and that life does not exist inside a television set or hidden in electronics...it is outside in the world.  It is in the moments with family and friends.  And so that is where my children and I could be found every single day, rain or shine, snow or sun...outside and with family and with friends.  

Our summers were spent on the river.  I would crawl out of bed at the ass crack of dawn and do all the things that needed doing before packing a giant beach bag full of granola, fruit, drinks, yogurt and sometimes lunch meat, towels, books, water toys and water and dog food. Then, time to wake the kids and start our day.  

Then came you.

You picked me up and carried me twenty seven hundred miles away.  You taught me I was so much more than only a mother, to you I was everything.  I was your girlfriend, your love, your wife.  Our life together was just beginning, it was so brand new.  Now I belonged here. 

I worked so hard learning to balance a new life here while trying to continue to nurture a little life left there.  You worked so hard to let me...to make it possible for me to try.  You worked so hard at learning to share me and be without me.  We worked so hard.  

I never told you, never once, just how difficult all of it was for me.  Leaving my son behind, leaving you behind, it was tearing me apart but I held on as best I could.  Each time I left you was so very painful, but I was learning to live with the feeling of being pulled in two directions.  I was the chew toy in the middle of two dogs wanting dominance.  But still I belonged somewhere.

Now, I don't belong there and I don't belong here, yet here I am.  I don't know who I am anymore. I've no idea what I want or where I want to be.  Recently someone asked me "what do you want?"  and I honestly couldn't answer...what I want I can't have, where I want to be I can not go.

I don't belong anywhere, my path has dead ended, my dreams have died, my love is lost and I am left all alone.  I do not recognize myself at all.

I am so lost.