personal information

Last night, my ex called me and said, "Joy, I’m engaged.”
I turned around, called my cousin, and screamed, “He’s getting MARRIED!” into the receiver.
And then I went to bed. Because I had no more words, did not know how to explain that while I was glad he was getting married, glad to the base of my spine, that I also, simultaneously, wanted to cry. For my loss.
It is not, as many believe and will most likely continue to believe, that I want to marry him; I don’t, or that I have pulled a classic Please-don’t-marry-her-I-loved-you-all-along-and-didn’t-know-it-you-used-to-love-me-and-you-do-now-choose-me! scenario, or even, as I have joked before, that I am loath to lose my proverbial “back-up man.”
It is more something about going home, about having no home at the moment, and that he was my last remnant of that sense, of home. Imagine someone saying, “Excuse me, I need the floor you’re standing on,” something akin to that. Sensation. Like waking up one morning to find you’re sleeping in an open field rather than your own bed.
To think that he can fall in love but that I cannot, that while I was the one who walked away, he is the one who moves on. Irony. It scares me. Leaves me breathless. And tender.
Be careful of me, please. I’ve just been skinned.