Solitude

In two days, I will cement the changes I’ve recently set in motion. If ‘like a bull in a china shop’ doesn’t apply to my utter lack of grace in navigating the matters of my heart in recent months, I don’t know what does.

It’s been rough, on others and on me.

Since that fateful day, “the decider,” I’ve been dangling off a ledge unsure of whether to hold on or to let go. No one likes the idea of a free fall, but I am also shamefully aware of the fact that I am too weak to pull myself back above ground right now, back to where I stood in early fall. And no longer is he atop the hill standing with a hand outstretched.

The wind has cleared our course.

Saturday, I move and say my final goodbye.

My heart sinks as I consider what it will feel like to pack my things away and remove them from a home that’s no longer mine. In just a month and a half, I’ll have been out for as long as I was in it. That’s a pretty bitter dose of perspective.

“It is the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for living." - Simone de Beauvoir

Now, I have to look into that which causes me great discomfort. Reasons why.

I owe someone answers about why I ran. I owe myself answers about what I needed that I wasn’t getting and why I felt it so pressing that I couldn’t wait for a level head and lucidity. Perspective. Time.

When I needed him most, I locked myself in a closet and the floor fell from beneath me as I finally found and made what I had all along feared—that I would be left alone.

You're looking at a ghost.

I am having trouble writing anything. I’m convinced it’s because I don’t like myself very much right now. I don’t like what I’ve done recently. I don’t like the state in which I’ve left my life and that I have no one to blame but myself. I don’t like that I don’t understand the whys surrounding all of this. And I don’t like that I don’t have the guts to explore that disorientation more.

I am too afraid I’ll find more I fear and more I hate.

This, along with my recent actions, is uncharacteristic, which only inspires more confusion and disgust. It’s amazing how quickly you can turn yourself into a stranger.

You know that age-old advice to find a way to be “whole” only comes when you feel half-empty? When “full” is a marathon you can’t begin to comprehend because you’re burning out on the 100-yard dash.

I am empty. I am broken. I am not. Whole.
Not even close.

This, I realize of course, is the glaring reason I am alone right now. Ironically, when you’re empty—precisely at the moment that you need another to lean on—is when you’re most injured by reaching out. You’re like a cat that’s getting bathed—you hurt everything that gets in your way, including yourself.

I’m a wet cat. Ha. At least I can still steal a laugh.

And now, let me put words in my mouth:

Hold my arms back when they reach for you—because they will. Because I’m not strong enough to pin them down myself. Hope blows the boughs a little upon your entry. I may not know “whole,” but I know I love you.

I used to understand what I had to offer, but I’ve since forgotten exactly what that is.

Now, I see a clichéd glimpse of a shell of a self that’s been worn down to its unpleasant looking nub through a lethal combination of too much and then not enough compromise.

I question why I left you. I cry with longing for your safe arms, but I can’t quite stifle the quiet thought that your return is my personal death. I don’t mean that—not how you must surely read it. I’m a better person with you, but maybe a better person is not who I am. Maybe this small person is who I need to be—for now. Until discomfort breeds growth and a better person to greet you at the pass months later, not years, is my hope.

In our greatest hour, I was always bracing for the fall. In the presence of others, I wondered if they bought what they saw. I tried to read on their faces whether I should trust what they appeared to: that our love was real, that we would last. I never did.

And so I preemptively jumped ship, without thinking, because it seemed inevitable that one of us would leave eventually. You or I, it didn’t really matter. We were too “rational” to hermetically seal things up after 25 years. You would go. It was a matter of time.

Of course now, when it’s too late, I realize I was self-fulfilling my fear of loss and discarding an irreplaceable love. I needed to know I didn’t need you. And as human beings often find the wrong end of the rifle in those dark hours, I learned through the irreversible pain that I couldn’t run from you. You are in me.

But no longer can I run to you either. I burned our home with us inside of it. Neither one of us lives there anymore.