cancer
I could talk to him or even see him with less distress than seeing or using his name. I had to email him about a financial matter and it was there, in his email address, and I know that when he replies his name will be sitting there, invading my inbox. That's actually exactly what it feels like—an invasion—although I can clearly see that such a feeling is unfounded and completely irrational.
I wanted to add a postscript to the email requesting that when he replied to me he not sign his name or indeed use his name at all given his propensity toward speaking in the third person. I started the sentence a few times but I just couldn't find the right words. You just can't ask someone to stop using their name, to tell them that the privilege of using that name or even having a name has been revoked. Hallmark doesn't make a card for that.
I avoid using his name whenever possible. It's a way for me to carve the cancer that was us out of what is left that is me. I can't undo the past (although I would if I could, I'm sad to report) so I obliterate it with the biggest, fattest, blackest magic marker on the planet. Most of the time I find that he was written in some kind of ball point pen that I would only deign to use in a captive situation such as a bank and that despite my careful shading the scratches of our former story remain legible on the page.
I pound my feet black and blue with running, yoga, and a new pair of four inch heels but I refuse to let the bruises slow me down. Even when they hurt I appreciate them. Someday it will be the same with the heart where I'll stop trying to protect it and just let it hurt. I aspire to be grateful to that cancer on a daily basis. I long for day when I can say, silently of course, "Cancer, I love you. Thank you."