Exodus.

Read 1, 2, and 3 first.


My parents returned from Mexico late Saturday night.  When they reached the San Francisco Airport, my mom turned on her phone to receive a text I had sent her a week before saying I'd left him.  She never texted me back.  Never asked any detailed questions.  Just greeted me with open arms when they arrived home.

I like to think they were overjoyed. 

Sunday Bambi was in Chico until sometime in the evening.  I knew because he had texted me about it the night before.  A pointless trip with one of his worthless drunk/druggie friends.  He was psyched.

It took me two weeks to fully move in to the aparment.  It took two hours for us to move everything out.  Including my baby kitty, which he tried valiantly to get back.  But I had too much emotion invested in him to let him go back to someone I knew would ultimately kill him, just as he almost killed me.

As we were driving over, my mom said to me, "Welcome to your first quasi-divorce."

The exodus from my near-life, near-death, near-marriage. 

By the time I moved out, I was fifty pounds lighter than I had been when I moved in.  I was thirty pounds lighter than I had been two months earler.  I was an unhealthy, anxiety ridden, and a complete and utter mess.  I felt broken.

Despite everything (and believe me, it's pretty glossed-over as a result of the length of this piece anyway), I didn't stop talking to him.  For years.  I didn't know how to let go of the only real love I'd ever known.  The only relationship I'd managed to stay in for longer than six months... 

The brown eyes.