I can't reconcile these things

I needed some juice last night so naturally I stopped quickly at the grocery store while driving home. I have been mostly vegan-ish for nearly three-ish years now and during that time every grocery store I enter I immediately gravitate toward the organic/healthy/nutty aisle or aisles depending on how progressive said grocer is. This allows me to bypass all of the synthetic, all of the treated and all of the lesser (read: affordable) fare and feel good about myself or at least about the things that will soon be absorbed into the make up of my biology.

I stood before the cage-free eggs and tofurky deli slices contemplating if three dollars for juice is still worth it. In this section you get your full range of nutrients and you pay dearly for each and every one.

I had been craving some R.N. Knudsen apple or pomegranate cocktail but I was halted at the Odwalla/Naked case. There was among those usual brands a juice I knew from a previous time. Bolthouse Farms juice. I remembered when I had first come upon these Bolthouse Farms drinks. My college roommate "turned me on" to them because he was insanely, possibly artificially fit. (I never found real evidence to corroborate my hunches about how he attained such an inhumanly perfect set of abs). On one trip to the grocery store together around 2 possibly 3 a.m. he picked up this small, green plastic bottle that had an unappetizing mixture of baby poop and Missouri River in it. I asked him why he was examining something so indisputably putrid. He spun the bottle around and showed me the Nutrition Facts label and I had never seen so many items listed beneath the second bold line, you know, where the vitamins and other actually healthy components are listed. I also had never seen so many three-hundred percents and four-hundred percents concerning food contents.

So I waxed nostalgic to the point of exhaustion and while still in this state of mind I glanced upon something that swelled my heart three-hundred percent. And it broke me utterly. Granola. Bear Naked brand granola cereal. I had bought some the last time Melissa and I went to Ohio and my parents' lake house in Indiana. I ate it as a snack the eleven hour trip home. For months after Melissa and I talked and laughed and felt good about how that was one of, if not the most pleasant trip we had ever taken together. This granola symbolized for me everything good and perfect about Melissa’s gift-likeness to me and our marriage to each other. I nearly fell on the floor.

This was an involuntary association and it should have been a rapturous one but even this random granola treat grabbed me by my unusually stretchy cheeks and shook me vigorously as it recounted details of what had been lost, what has left me and what will probably never be again.

I didn't ask to be reminded of all this. I am no glutton for punishment. I have felt more than my fair share of pain. Like I said, this glimpse at the minute losses I am suffering was strictly involuntary and quite unwelcome as it interrupted an otherwise pleasant evening.

These are the things that tell me I have not attained resolution and I have not "gotten over" her. Even at my most focused times of resolute "I'm moving on" mindfulness some lightening always strikes my brain and reminds me I cannot forget. Or perhaps that I can't not remember. This is the madness that breaks my heart because if this continues for the rest of my life I will never have a healthy relationship again. I fear I will wake up in the middle of the night craving Melissa and I will see my new lover next to me and I will feel even more despair than I do now. I fear this is a possibility because these unsought recollections have not remotely lessened. I know it has only been four months but how fucking long does it take? I hate being a slave to Melissa or the memory of our happiness. I hate it so, so much. Am I so weak that I cannot achieve peace and freedom? Is that even correct to say? Is it achievable or is it granted? If it is granted then how should I ask for it? I want peace. I want freedom. I want peace.