Some anniversaries are a cause for celebration.But there are some dates and milestones in our life that we can only hope to put behind us. Death, divorce and getting dumped would rank high on the list of the latter.
Recently I notched up a milestone of my own. A full year has passed since my life was turned upside down and I was glad that I was meant to be buried deep in work, and therefore hoping that it would pass me by quietly. But as always, these things have a way of creeping through the cracks and seeping its way around you even when you were least expecting it.
Hence, my ramblings on one such night. Written in the lonely darkness of a hotel room in Budapest, where the ghost of my past decided the pay me a visit and scrape at the scabs of my wound to reveal the pink flesh that throbbed beneath it.
If I
If I disappeared from your life,
Would you notice me missing?
If I vanished from your world,
Would you think to come looking?
When love is what you live for
How do you keep on going?
When it’s ripped from your life
Leaving a scar that will not heal.
The echo of emptiness still rings clearly in my ear
And now it’s all void and hollow,
Filled with unimaginable sorrow
I gave you everything I had
But it never seemed like much
It was honest and unconditional,
And I emptied myself into you
I got more than I deserved, more than I required
But when you took it all away
You left me rooted in the past
Nursing a wound that will not stop weeping.
“I know I don’t deserve it, but you will forgive me. Because you love me and that’s what you’re supposed to do” - from the movie Valentine's Day
Is it true? Is that true? For me it is. At least I’d hoped it was. I needed her to forgive me. I did something. Something bad, and it changed the way she looked at me. I could see it in her eyes. They were colder, harder and try as I could, I didn’t’ recognize them. It was almost like I was looking into them for the first time. But they conveyed everything she couldn’t say to me. The hurt, her disappointment, her pain.
I expected her to cry, uncontrollably. But she didn’t. She had been and she would, later. But now she wanted to show me that she was strong. That she could do this on her own. And in a warped way, I felt like she’d kicked away the crutches that I’d involuntarily given her.
In this moment, she was no longer the young innocent girl that I had fallen madly in love with. She was wounded, and it had forced her out her shell. There was no way she was going to appear defeated. As I looked at her and watched the transformation in front of me, I was torn between feeling regret for ending her innocence and extremely proud of the way she was handling it. She was a fighter, and today she had learnt to fend for herself, even if it meant attacking the one person who truly loved her most. It was a skill necessary for survival and ironically it was I, who had thought it to her.
And why not? I’d thought her almost everything else she knew. About life, about choice, about falling in love and soon, about falling out of love. Yes I was her complete picture. Her finishing school.
Perhaps I should have seen the signs that day. That one day, should she choose to, she would find it within her to walk away. But I was too blinded by my foolishness. Or maybe I was distracted by the look in her eye. The way she was looking at me. I could tell I looked different to her. She saw me in a different light now. I on the other hand, merely saw her seeing me. Perhaps I should have recognised the seed that I had planted but I was too deeply in love with her to even begin that train of though.
And I supposed perhaps that’s why she’s the survivor, and I am the one left longing. That she has moved on, not looked back and embraced the opportunities ahead of her. I envy her zest and resilience. If I too had the benefit of youth, perhaps I would find it within me to do the same. But this time I lack the energy, the strength and the optimism that is necessary. And because of this, i find myself stuck in a past that doesn’t exist, waiting for a future that can never be.
