The Precipice

So coming up for air after spending so long drowning in sorrow, I realize that there is so much more to it than that. I may not be wallowing in self-pity anymore, I'm also fighting to regain some semblance of the person I once knew. The only real emotion I seem to be able to hold onto is apathy. I feel so...numb to everything. Even the simple act of listening to old songs that used to speak to me...does nothing. The only ones that really have any affect are the ones that express the emptiness that's been carved out in my own lift.

I'm not sure where this road is taking me, but I'm so sick of this seclusion. I'm ready to break out, blaze new trails of my own, apart from the condescension I feel all around me. I am dying to break down this block that I can't seem to get beyond. I'm ready to leave the familiar behind, and run head-long into the unknown.

Sadly, that all sounds wonderful in my head, but it certainly doesn't add up to anything in reality. Why is it that 99% of people have all their hopes and dreams, but never actually go after them. Jimmy over there has a dream to be a concert pianist, but he's working in an elbow-to-elbow cubicle from 9-5, miserable ever flipping second of it. Is that going to be me, 5, 10 years from now? Will I head for my dreams, only to watch them be hurled off a cliff onto the precipice of reality below? I don't want that to be my story. I want to have a real, full, exciting story that I can look back on and say, "I did it. I did what I wanted to. I lived my dream, and I never regretted a minute of it." I want that so badly I ache inside. What if it doesn't happen though? What if, 20, 30 years from now, I wake up with five kids, and a pot-bellied husband who I haven't had sex with in nearly a year? God help, don't let that be my future. I may go to sleep and never wake up.

All I know is that I can't let my life be driven by fear, uncertainty of the unknown, or an innate desire to please everyone but myself. I HAVE to live my life for myself, do what I see to be best for ME (because we really are the only ones that truly know ourselves, right?), and not continue to ask myself what so-and-so thinks I should do. Or be too afraid to take that dive off the cliff into the cool waves of triumph below.

I want to take that dive.

New Horizons

For so long, I've allowed myself to sink into the dark abyss that is my heartache. I didn't share my pain with others, they wouldn't know how to deal with me. I bore my misery quietly, allowing myself to become lost inside myself. I couldn't bear the thought of the one I loved so deeply to truly be gone. I tried to fix things - I'm a fixer, if I see any possibility of a resolution, I'll go for it - but it was almost as if all my efforts were just being tossed carelessly back at me.

Silence. That's all I had. An unbearably resounding silence that seemed to stretch out endlessly before me. I wondered if it would ever end. My life seemed to be unraveling at the seams, and I didn't know how to catching everything fast enough, no way to hold it all together anymore.

So, I did the only thing I knew to do. I retreated into myself. I shut down, emotionally, physically, everything. Oh, to the untrained eye, everything seemed to have changed little. I still smiled and laughed in the right places, I even made the occasion jab at a dear friend. But, it was all merely a facade, a wall to keep out all the unanswerable questions that would surely arise. After all, what would be my answer? How could I explain my heartache, the feeling that something had died inside me? I couldn't, and I wouldn't. No one would be able to comprehend it inevitably, so it would have been useless.

Finally - finally - I'm beginning to resurface. It's taken so long. I never thought I'd come back. The numbness I felt inside extended further than I ever though possible. I've always seen myself as sort of a bleeding heart. I care too deeply, and ache too keenly. But lately...it's as if I had died inside. And maybe for a time I did. Maybe a part of me did die. The remnants of my childish dreams and ideas about the how the world should be. How love should be.

All my preconceived notions are gone, and I'm left with something else. Something I haven't quite figured out yet. I'm changing, turning into someone I don't quite know yet. But I've learned one thing, and that is to trust myself. To rely on myself. I don't have to be the damsel or the one who needs saving. And I don't have to try and be someones saving grace. I need to be my own. I need to stand alone. I need to be strong for me, not for someone else.

I'm so tired of trying to be this for this person, this for that person. I'm just ready to be myself for myself. I don't want to please anyone but myself anymore. I have ideas, opinions, and feelings that don't add up to others' and finally that's OK with me. If I don't please others with who I am, then maybe they aren't worth pleasing. I'm doing the best with what I've been dealt.

And as for my own "luckless romance..." I wish him all the happiness this world, and the next, can offer. I don't begrudge him anything. His goodness, kindness, and friendship, even for the short time I was able to bask in it, was all well worth the loss of it in the aftermath. I'll always hold a place in my heart for him, and I'll always miss my dear friend. I hope he finds what he's searching.

"Goodbye, my almost lover, my hopeless dream. Shoulda known you'd bring me heartache. Almost lovers always do..."