This is not my life.

A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.
                     ~Muhammad Ali

That would be the most fitting quote for Caleb, who turns fifty today and has not wasted a moment of his life, save for the ones he spends thinking about what could have been but never would have been, since my life was as well-planned out as his, once upon a time.

Then he painted over my big picture, not with shades of grey, but with solid black. Taking the hopes of a small girl and poking holes in them until all the air ran out and they fell back to earth with significant thuds.

I still hear the echo when I close my eyes, and he is still trying to make it up to me, but in a fucked up, twisted, demonic way because he doesn't know any better. He's not a Good Human and I am not a small girl anymore with my balloon dreams lifting my toes off the ground. Nope, I've been shot down, torn up, cast aside and broken so many times since then his evil barely registers anymore, and I will hush Lochlan's dire warnings with glassed-over, unfocused eyes and a will toward self-destruction because then I can still feel something, anything, that isn't desperate love or frightening abandonment.

But don't ask me to name this feeling, because I don't know what it is.

The proposal was not in the stack of envelopes with my Record of Employment, my final paycheque and my severance pay (of which I did not earn and will return to his account). It wasn't in the pewter envelope, which listed a day, a time and a dress, and the initials of those he would permit to accompany me to see him.

And so I am home from our big dinner out and taking a moment to change into the dress listed, which I had to call and ask about, not recognizing the description. The doorbell rang and the dress was then delivered. A new Valentino, the first in a decade, made by hand to the measurements of the green Valentino dress he sent back to them to mimic fit.

The other dress was returned to me as well. It pales in comparison.  This one is breathtaking and ridiculously overpowered for me and red, ironically. It's like taking a Ferrari down the street when a bicycle would suffice.

I'm nervous. Did you notice when I'm throwing out all sorts of allegories I'm nervous?

Ben's initials were not on the card.

Loch's were.

This feels more like a Mexican standoff than an afterparty but I gotta go. Or rather, I have to talk Lochlan into going, if he can talk at all when he sees me in this dress.