The truth is, sometimes love isn't so funny. Sometimes, it leaves you with a wound that cuts so deep you're not sure you can go on.
But you do. Because you have to. Or maybe even because it's what you were born to do.
In the intervening 8 months or so since you and I last talked via this blog, I tried oh-so-hard to make it work with a guy. I smiled at all the right times, I giggled, I dressed up, I shaved my legs...and when that didn't work, I cried and I cussed. Oh man, did I cuss a lot. There are sailors that could've learned a thing or two from me! My apologies to this guy for that. Also--that thing that I did where I totally embarrassed you? Yeah...sorry for that too. It was only once though, right?! :)
Girls will understand this immediately...and I'm hoping that most of you guys will, too: once in a lifetime, a person walks into your life and you feel drawn in. Like a magnet, you get stuck to them. It's immediate and definite and the pull of the moon couldn't take you away from him. I found that guy. And just as quickly as he came, it seemed he was gone, lost in another world with a woman who will just as likely get her heart broken. I say that not out of jealousy or jest, but out of knowledge of facts that will go unspoken here as so to protect anonymity.
And now, Mr. Heartbreaker.....it's been six weeks since we've spoken or seen each other; we've never gone this long without finding our way back to each other. I am relieved for that, for I find myself now reflecting on who I was when I was with you and who I have the potential to now become. It would be patently false to pretend that you haven't changed me, that you didn't affect every cell in my body and alter its constitution. You took me to the moon and then you took me to hell and there is no use in denying that you changed the course of my life. Perhaps for better, maybe for worse, but to try to move on and hide from evolution would be an exercise in insanity.
In the last six weeks, however, I have come to realize that I have an inner strength that you didn't affect. I can do it--I can live the life I am meant to live, on my own. Sure, you would've been a beautiful complement to it all had we survived our self-created failures...but as it is, there were critical missing parts that pre-empted our potential success. The things that made you mad at me are the parts that make me me: I am fiesty and spicy and prone to a spontaneity that was outside what the reality of our relationship could endure. I don't make my bed every morning and I leave an occasional dish in the sink. In other words...I'm flawed, if you want to call it that.
I would prefer to remember us as having differences that were incompatible with each other. Not for the little stuff like the dishes and the bed, but for the big stuff, like the way we each preferred to communicate and the way you chose to walk away when everything went pear-shaped...and not just once, but over and over again. For me, trust is built by a continued presence through the hard times...for you, the hard times are made for disappearing from the reality of emotion and life.
While I am still mourning the loss of a best friend who once knew me like no other, I also am working through making peace with all that has happened. With time, the scar tissue that patches my heart will not be so bothersome; it may even serve to protect what was once torn, making it stronger and more resilient to injury.
For when true love falls apart, there can be no salvaging the pieces...they merely melt away, dissolving far too quickly in salty teardrops and leave behind only thin gossamer threads of memories. Those threads are stitches, sewing together a difficult past with a hopeful future.
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