Can’t Touch This

The other night while I lay on the couch in my old house talking to Y&H, I noticed some of Ex’s writing on one of the paper cut-out hearts I had taped to the wall a few years ago for Valentine’s Day.  I ignored it for the night and kept conversation going with Y&H.  I wasn’t in the mood to discuss another leftover jab that Ex had left for me.  

Sometime during my fits of sleep that night, I realized that it doesn’t matter what it says.  Ex is dead, and he can’t hurt me with his words anymore.  I could choose to let them, but that sounds like it would make life harder than it needs to be.  I made a mental note to look at the words in the morning.  

Morning came, and I was too busy getting me and Little Guy ready to go that I forgot.   I waited all day and contemplated not reading it.  I’m too nosy to let myself get away with that.  I thought about the choices that I had to deal with the note.  I could not read it and throw it away or read it and throw it away or burn it.  When I got home, this is what I read:

“You don’t love me or you never did.”

I threw it in the trash.  

Little Guy saw this and retrieved it from the garbage saying he wanted and why did I do that?  I didn’t have the heart or any good reason to tell him that his dad had written mean words on the paper, so I told him that I didn’t want the heart up on the wall anymore.  He put it back on the wall, then decided against it, against them all being up.  We took all three paper hearts down off the wall and threw them away.  I haven’t missed them.  

I feel bad that Ex felt that he had to leave that for me to read.  I felt bad that he felt that way, when he knew that I loved him.  We just weren’t right together.  That was his choice and way of expressing himself before he died.  I know he has left me other messages in the house.  I found another last night in the bedroom.  “LOVE U” he had written in the dust of a framed picture of the two of us.  Y&H was with me.  (He is intrigued by the piles of mess left everywhere never knowing what he’ll uncover.)  I erased the letters with one of Ex’s left-behind socks and put the photo back in the drawer.  It’s kind of weird to feel his presence in the house like that, but I take comfort in knowing that he can’t hurt me with his words anymore.