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When the Professor and I were dating, his younger brother, Junior, had a series of girlfriends.  Junior was edgy, creative, hilarious.  I think he was searching for something -- someone -- lighter than himself.  Every year at Christmas, he brought one home with him, and every year, his mother had a stocking for the girl, one with her name embroidered on it.  Every year, there was a new stocking, a new name.  I don't know what happened to the old ones.  Maybe they were tossed in the attic, gathering dust.  Maybe they were thrown out.

I still think of the Professor's mom as my mother-in-law.  She hasn't acknowledged me once since the Professor told her that he wanted a divorce.  Neither has Junior.  Not once.  You would think that I was a serial killer, or a serial cheater.  You woud think that I left him. But maybe they hated me all those years.  Maybe they breathed a sigh of relief, followed by many more sighs and much more relief, when the Professor actually left me.  But I didn't breath a sigh of relief when I lost them.  To me, that is what it was. And is.  Loss.

I wanted to tell someone a story the other day, and it started with the Professor's father.  I opened my mouth to speak, and realized I didn't know what to call him.  My ex-father-in-law?  He died before the Professor left me, and so that didn't seem right.   And I had loved him, and I thought that he at least liked something in me, some fire he saw, however much he worried it would burn out his son.  I couldn't tell my story, because I couldn't figure out the words around that.  So I started, and stumbled, and thought of the Professor and his family, which had been my family.  And I found that I couldn't think of anything else, so I stopped talking.  There was simply no way to begin that felt adequate.

I once thought I knew where things stood.  I once believed that I knew people, and that they knew me, and loved me anyway.  I have learned much in these last sixteen months, mostly about myself.  About others, I have learned that I did not know, that I did not see and certainly did not not understand.  I was, probably, simply wrong, about many things.   About many people.  That knowledge, and the painful learning of it, has made me someone I was not.  Someone stronger, someone scarred, someone deeper, someone hurt.  I am brave, and I am terrified.  I am changed, in both good ways and bad.  I can never be unchanged.

I was wrong about what it means to love someone.  Love goes deeper and longer than I ever knew.  Love is less selfish than I once was.  Love treads more carefully than I did.  And love can bear you up against intolerable pain and make you stronger than you dream possible.  But everyone does not love the way that I do.  Or, at least, everyone I love does not love me that way back.  But still, I am not a stocking that can be replaced or tucked away to gather dust in the attic.  You can pack me up and leave me up there, but I am not.  I am not fungible.  I am deeply flawed, I know.  But so are we all.  And there is beauty and kindness --something uniquely worthy of love, tenderness, loyalty -- in me.  In you.  I may not know yours yet, but it is there.

I don't know yet what it all means.  I don't know what to do with all that I have learned, or how much more I will heal, or in what way the breaks and scars might make me even better -- or worse.  I want hope for the best, although I have no idea what that might bring.  But I know I have to hope, because I yearn for more.  Despite, and because of, everything.  More.