All that's left are the memories.
It's been two years. Two years since I left myself in Michigan. Two years since I broke my best friend's heart and left my entire world for almost a decade.
A little less than two years since he chose his girlfriend over our friendship. A little less than two years of bitterness. A little less than two years of crippling guilt and sadness.
Don't get me wrong, I've experienced lots of life in those two years. I've fallen in love and cared deeply for a woman I never see anymore. I've had my heart buoyed and then crushed by another. I've made friends. I've endeared myself to others with my outlandish personality and don't-give-a-shit attitude. I live in a lovely apartment in a lovely part of town. I get sunshine year-round. I make decent money. I never lack for things to do. I.... yeah.... I live. I live, right? I am living, correct? Is that what this is? Sometimes I can't tell.
I wake up in my bed in Michigan. I wake up with him sleeping fitfully, doing that weird twitch thing he does in his sleep that drives me nuts. I wake up and it's cold outside. The leaves are turning colours and I'm worried about all the bills we gotta pay.
I wake up. It's hot. My shitty dumpster-salvaged fan blows away the memories of a life I once led. Sometimes I don't even know what's real? 10 years.... just gone. The past comes in flashes. Vivid and solid like lead bolts in my gut. Sometimes it's so visceral that my breath catches and the tears fall before I know they're coming. 10 years....
Do you know what it's like to wonder if a full third of your life ever actually happened? Do you know what it's like to sever your heart from your body so that you can't hear it weep within your chest? Do you know what it's like to hurt the one person you care the most in the world for in order to save yourself? Do you know what it's like to know you've done the right thing but wonder at the cost of it? You probably do. I don't have the monopoly on pain...
Sometimes all I can hear is the dull click of my heart trying to fit its pieces back together again. But they are barnacled and barbed, so long out of my chest they have been.
I don't know what I am anymore. I'm a caricature of something that used to be a real person. Sometimes the mask hangs awkwardly, revealing a grotesque juxtaposition of soulful and soulless.
I just can't stop thinking about how he's gone. I just can't get over the fact that he isn't in my life anymore. I just keep hoping that some day he'll say hello while I suppress the nausea of the certainty that he won't.
I'm not supposed to miss him. He betrayed me afterall.
I'm not supposed to hate myself for leaving him. At the end, our marriage was making me physically ill.
I'm not supposed to look back. I have so much in front of me, you might think me ungrateful.
I'm not supposed to feel.... but I've never been better at anything in the world than feeling.
I want to turn it off, but I can't. I want it to stop, but it won't. It churns around within me, tapping on the back of my teeth begging to be let out. I coil it tightly and I swallow it down and I whisper menacingly until it settles and it lets me be.
I know there is a way out of it. I know I just have to be patient. But some days, I am tired. I am just so tired of fighting. I just want it to stop. I just need the world to stop moving... just for a moment. Let me catch my breath. Let me get up off of this floor. Let me rise again. Let me feel again. Let me love again... even if it's just for a moment.
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