I am sure this part will go through many edits before I hit publish. This one will either be the easiest or the hardest part to write - there will be no gray area. This is the loss that has changed my entire world, has opened my eyes to myself, to the perceptions I had, and to what little I know of myself and life. Though it wasn't the 2nd loss for me, it feels right to place it between the two, as the second continues far past the culmination of this loss, and this loss began in the midst of the first.
In July of this year, I lost my anchor. I didn't realize how much of a compass this life was to mine. The ways that fate had intertwined and yet starcrossed for so long. I took for granted that which I expected to always be there, to constantly exist. Never did I realize the magnitude of someone to whom I'd barely spoken a word in 3 years... devastating earthquake which would erupt for the months that followed, the nights marked in sweat-soaked dreams, the evenings drowned in tears, the sight of familiar things that brought on a torrent of tears. The way someone whom I had never truly been able to love - how it had made me never want to love again.
Never had I experienced a death such as this before. In moments, I could see every memory flood. The way he'd hug me, the way he'd lift the kids up and swing them around, the look in his eyes when he spoke. The way he'd come up and visit every day after work, relieving me for moments of the baby, cuddling and cooing with her, staying as late as he could before heading home ... to think of my blindness, to see what could have been... but I chose instead, to become the second choice.
How to feel like you've lost your life partner, when you were never partners to begin with? In the pain of it all, it makes no sense to me, and yet here I sit and feel it anyways. I feel ridiculous, my life halted over a man that was no more than a mere friend.
Mere is hardly the word. Who was there to pull me out of the truck when the bed jammed the door in that awful accident? Who sat with me in the hospital when I felt alone? Who danced with me that New Years Eve when everyone else stood away from me, silent. Who called me time and again after no contact, and found me even when I was impossible to find? I remember his truck, his motorcycle, the look of him on it. The smile on his face as he'd get out of the truck and saw my face. The way he laughed, his touch. Even his handwriting, I can't bear to think of rubbing away - I remember the day he wrote it.
I know, I sound the picture of insanity.
How to explain to a world, that someone who was never yours, was your everything? Only, I never told him.
What difference did it make? When I chose otherwise (without knowing, or else, I'd have chosen) ... he walked away and did too. He married someone else.
In April, my mom told me of his last birthday party. They knew he wouldn't make it to next April, if he even made it 6 more months. I went, he barely spoke to me, and I left devastated. I wished I hadn't gone.
I remember July 16. I was getting ready for work, and my phone jingled. A text from my mom, two words. "Bad news". Out of all of the things it could have been... I knew. I hit the floor from the weight and tried to gather myself. I called her instantly, and she hesitated over the words. I asked. Yes, she said, and the tears ran like rain. All I wanted then was for someone in this crashing world to hold me upright, keep me steady. And I was alone.
As soon as the nanny arrived, I ran to my moms work, hoping to search her eyes for truth ... and finding the sickening truth there. He was gone.
I searched all day for peace within myself, and I found none. I no longer wanted any of this existence without his breath in the same air as mine, his heart beating in the same moment, his life LIVING at the same moment. The impact of him wholly hit me, and yet I had to work through the day, acting as though nothing of consequence had occurred... I was a numb, hollow shell by then... I had learned long ago how to paste a smile on top of tears.
I tried to reach out, flailing as though drowning, and I suppose I was. I didn't understand. How did I FEEL so much? Where was this pain coming from? This wasn't my pain to feel, for he wasn't mine to feel pain for. How stupid was I, to have loved this love and lost it and feel as though I'd lost someone I'd spent my lifetime with?
Still, even now, I have to fight the urge to completely make myself solitary. At this point, love feels lost to me forever. In part because of this loss, I never want to even try to love again. This has shown me death in all its certainty, and I can't risk love again. Because of this, I talk to few, I entertain nothing, and I feel little.
Its because of this, also, that I have found in myself the ways I have so often hurt others, used them for subconcious gains. Ways I showed affection to those that I did not feel it for, and ways that I manipulated situation to satiate some thirst for importance, some need to be needed. I didn't understand fully the difference between need and want. And it was within want that I thought I'd descovered being needed. How wrong I was.
This series of loss - for it has been a series - a familiar dance over time of missed opportunities, ill-timed fates, the ultimate loss itself stretching near a decade in its painful long coming... has taught me to be content with what I have and who I am alone. And to not miss a moment with those closest and dearest. That means to me, that all of my time, my love, my life, belongs in the children given to me - as we never know when time is near. And that means I don't have time for matters of the heart. Besides, my love died with him.
No comments:
Post a Comment