We met in darkness, your face lit with a smile. I could feel the answer before we spoke, could feel the weight of your words before you said anything. Two weeks of complete silence and I had created a completely separate reality of what would be, but when I saw you I suddenly woke up, remembered everything, remembered you. And I knew it was over.
Here is where I am:
I’m not sure, after today, that I have had my heart broken before. Things have made me very sad, and relationships ending have made me feel sick and miserable without a doubt. But my heart has always felt okay, just weak. Maybe. Again, this is all perspective. I have experienced depression and disappointment in other arenas in my life, but actually having my heart broken— I’m not sure. What I felt today was a cracking in my chest, a physical splitting of something inside me. Instead of all of your hurtful words pouring in, I felt all of my pains pouring out.
“I just can’t see myself marrying you.”
Alongside your defense, I was reminded of the only other verbal confirmation of rejection that would come close in my memory: “I am just not really physically attracted to you anymore.” That, and memories of hurt came flooding out, my own wrongs and hurts I have spread filled my entire body and I could physically feel the weight of all the pain I had caused. I remembered the driveway and telling some boy from a long time ago that we would never be. And I remembered how sick “doing the right thing” made me feel. And how I’m not sure that telling myself it was the right thing to do will ever make it okay that I did it. I don’t activate these memories unless it comes out by accident somewhere in my writing and I’m never sitting at home just remembering things like that. Maybe it was good to do that just this once, to be completely split open and to let the pain just pour on in, to let it fill me up, to drown me. The weight has since passed and now it’s time for bed and I can grasp the idea of being okay. I think being staunchly aware somewhere inside me that this was there the whole time has made it less surprising, though not any less miserable. We all know how much I do love being right.
We don’t owe anyone anything in this life. Maybe doing the right thing is being brutally honest or maybe doing the right thing is riding things out until something else rips us apart. Maybe doing the right thing is ignoring your problems until somebody else makes you face them. Maybe doing the right thing is some combination of all of this. Or maybe none of it. I’m not sure. I am sure that whatever happens is just another thing that happens. Every day something happens and we live and we do the best we can. We can carry these things with us, but the hope is that we are aware enough in the moment to not let those things control our path.
I will take it with me, but I will not take you. You are not like the others. You are not like anyone. Being with you was (most of the time) like living in some weird dream, and now that is how it feels, like a false memory, like something I just made up. Perhaps this is because all of the worlds I live in are just ones inside me, ones that don’t actually exist. If that’s the way I am, though, that is the way I will continue to be. But I will erase you from those places as much as I can and you will be out of my life forever. You are empty space on my walls now. You are not a reason or a motivation- you are nothing now except a character I remember from a place that never was. As a person, I will speak well of you, forever and ever. As a lover, I will never speak of you again.
And this is the end of another of Kate’s fairy tales, another ending to a another grand romance. Right on schedule…
Shoe Bird. 