Of a loss

Things will be fine, I am sure, but it certainly feels right now as if the whole world is trembling as much as my heart. Here is my groping attempt at an explanation:

You used to lay at night thinking: if only you could meet a man who was kind, gentle, compassionate, who treated you like you were precious, special. Someone who would put up with your demanding moods, your sometimes irrational requests, your moments of neediness and overbearing bossiness. Someone who listened intently every time you opened your mouth, who would stroke your hair and kiss your forehead when he thought you were asleep. Who treated all his friends with the same kindness with which he treated you. Who would never, ever raise his voice at you.

Then one night you met him, that boy who was all of the things you wished for.
Three of the happiest years of your life are spent, evenings by the beach, in smoke-filled rooms, at parties, at home cuddled on the couch, whispering so as not to wake your roommates.

And –oh!- the travels, all over the world, kissing in the Piazza San Marco, meandering the streets of Amsterdam, tangled in sheets and sea-breeze in Mallorca, fish-taco eating contests in Rosarito, street food in Taiwan, half-moon parties under the stars in Thailand, sitting on a beach in Hawaii, both of you shutting your eyes so tight, “let’s try to remember this moment, never forget it,” you said then. And you haven’t.

With time came the familiarity, he became an old friend, so comfortable that you can't remember a time before his voice, a smile before his smile.
Your friends, you know, look up to your relationship.

Yet you’ve felt an emptiness growing inside.

It was always there, but its presence became more apparent after your time away
It’s an echoing void, a silence that is deafening, and when you think of him you feel it even more. But it’s not coming from him—it’s coming from you.

Perhaps it’s because you’ve never really allowed yourself this kind of love, you’ve never fully let yourself reciprocate.

Deep inside you feel a hunger, one that will not be satiated unless you hurt him, and you would never ever want to hurt him.

Really, truly, you don’t know what it is. But this is what you think it is: you want to be alone, to find yourself. You think it is perhaps impossible for you to find someone else until you have found who you are—until you are ready. You want to live life, if just for a few years, unfettered.

You feel—tethered, like a satellite that can’t go farther than the bounds of gravity.

He’s given you so much freedom, has never demanded anything of you, any more commitment than you would give, yet despite it all there’s this feeling that you can’t knock.

You fear that if you don’t leave, if you stay, you might end up staying forever, wondering for the rest of your life what would have happened if you had gone.
Is it better to be untrue to him or untrue to yourself? Is it better to be grounded than floating in space, aimlessly, for you can view your commitment as a tether or as an anchor.

Maybe it’s none of this. Maybe this is your greatest flaw, the constant discontent at everything, even the best things, in your life. Always searching for something, you cast all other things aside to find that they are, in the end, the things you had been looking for in the first place.

A saying inspires you:
If, in your fear, you hold on to love that you aren’t supposed to hold onto, it is better that you pass out of love’s threshing floor, into the seasonless land where you will laugh, but not all of your laughter, and cry, but not all of your tears.

You don’t want to live life this way. You want to laugh all of your laughter, you want to cry all of your tears.

How trite—despite all your reasons, it’s really just come down to a form letter, the classic “Dear John”: I’m sorry, it’s not you, it’s me.

It’s a tugging feeling, something you had felt three years earlier—sitting here alone you feel it most acutely.

You always say that upheaval is a catalyst for change. And change is in the air, it’s in your future, you can feel it’s weight already.

How do you leave someone so suited to you?

You are lucky, this is the second time someone has really truly loved you. The first time, you left.

Which has betrayed you, is it your mind or your heart?