Sometimes I just log onto my webpage and gaze at the photographs I posted here. I look amazingly beautiful, don't you think? Well, actually, I don't care what you think, I know I look great. (Just kidding) And as I stare at them I begin to wonder where I went. Who was that woman that seemed so happy and what happened that made her change so drastically and in such a short amount of time.

Truth is, I was happy and felt complete. I look at the second one, I remember that entire day. He took me to have my hair done, he went and got me a bowl of fruit and fed me while I had dye on my hair. We went back to my apartment and made love, then we puttered around and he tinkered with a new TV stand. We hung out with the girls that lived upstairs and made plans for the evening. Dinner and dancing at the City Cafe in Garden City. I loved to go dancing with him. It was one of the best things that we did together. Sometimes we would dance in the supermarket, in elevators, in the living room and backyard. I was quite literally walking on air whenever he held me in his arms and danced. I always felt like the most fortunate woman on the face of the earth that he was with me. I sometimes get so scared that I will never have that feeling again. And, even if I do, it will never be the same. No one, to this day, can understand the magnitude of that statement, so I gave up trying to explain a long time ago.

And yet, I digress. So I look at these photos and I remember the emotions and the bliss and the sheer joy of living and being and I wonder where did I go. Will I ever come back?

Today I notice I haven't been photographed in a really long time. I haven't had a reason to dress up and celebrate Saturday night. I haven't danced. When someone else forces you to look into your past and then dissects it like a frog in biology, you can't help but ponder all the reasons that define you as a person and all the sentiments that make you that way. I have been so hard on myself for so long, I literally willed myself away from life and living and love. I consumed myself in sadness and pain and depression and anger. It has gotten me nowhere at an alarmingly fast pace. Yet, I'm still here, life is still here and love is right outside my door. I want to be that woman again so badly, I want to wear that smile in my heart once more.

Yes, I still wonder where he is, what he is doing, if he is okay. Not a day goes by that I don't think about him and sometimes I still cry. He won't answer the phone when I call him anymore and yes, I do reach out and want to hear his voice, but he is gone it seems and loving and living and dancing with somebody else. I only get angry about this, because he would always take calls from that bitch in heat that lives in Commack when I was with him and for some unknown reason he won't take a call from me. Do I scare him? Does he feel guilt for the things that he did to me or does he actually think that I am an evil person and he is happy to have nothing to do with me anymore? I sometimes feel like I need answers to these questions and I haven't gotten any, sometimes I feel like I never will. But I always feel like I deserve them. After all, I am still here and I am worthy and I can be that beautiful, self-assured woman smiling in those photographs again. I am. He walked away from me and I want to know why. Dammit, I deserve to know why.

So all this comes from the past few days and the trepidation of things to come. I hate not knowing and having to face this alone again. I hate that he was never there for me during any of this, not once. I hate is a very strong statement, yet I do. But I do not hate him, just the choices that he made. I hate that he left me alone and stopped loving me without letting me know. I hate not dancing anymore.