How are you?

Do you ever feel like you are living a lie? I do, especially now. The next time someone asks me how I am, I would love to say. "Awful. Actually awful, probably the worst I have ever been in my life. Thanks". But I don't. I never do and probably never will. Every time I hear myself say, "Great, thanks", a voice inside my head says, "No you are not. Your husband has left you, you are totally heart-broken and facing life alone. You are therefore not great!" The thing is my realities keep crashing into each other lately, huge head-on collisions. To all intense purposes I look the same, I get up, put my make-up on, accessorize, I look the part. I laugh and sing and play with my beloved son. I chat to the butcher, to the people I meet in the park while walking the dog, I smile, I laugh, I appreciate a sunny day. I think my life is good. Then my other reality will come crashing in, my husband has left, I am on my own, I am not sure if I am Mrs now or not and suddenly it all changes. The picture is still the same, but everything is different, everything is painful, everything is tinged with sadness, everything feels like it is ending not beginning. The thing is I do not know how to live this life, I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to do this life on my own, cause I made a vow, a promise with someone I thought I would be with forever. I had his child. We became parents together. We do this life together. I do not have the instruction manual for how to do it alone. I threw away the guarantee, I didn't ever think it would break. So here I am one careful owner of a broken marriage, that I have no idea how to fix or how to live my life without it.