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..."