Requiem

I cannot adequately describe what I feel as I look through past posts on this blog. I feel almost as if I am reaching some unknown world, some specter of a place that is no longer real. But it once was real. It once was me. It once was my world. And tasting even just the vague memory that these posts elicit brings the full alien nature of my present life to my attention with breathtaking force. I get up each morning, I go about my day, and I lay down each night, all in the same place, but it is truly foreign. I am simply forgetting.

I have avoided this post for some time now. I simply wasn't ready to write it. But I need to now. I can't keep this bottled in any more.

I think there were only a few days left of Christmas break when I found out something was wrong. My boyfriend confessed that he had hit a huge bout of depression while home with his family, and that he was having major doubts about us. He said that we needed to talk when he got home. Home. Back to Utah, I mean.

I knew something was wrong, and I asked him to please not make any rash decisions before he got back and talked with me. He said he wouldn't.

He hugged me when I picked him up at the airport, but he didn't hold my hand in the car. He talked for most of the drive to Provo. I could sense how intently he was driving the conversation to the mundane. Deep down I was in turmoil.

We got to my house and sat down on my bed, and he handed me a letter he'd written in hopes that he could express himself more adequately. A letter I've buried in a drawer and haven't touched in nearly two months. A letter that confirmed my worst fears, that shattered every hope I'd held for us, and that broke me.

He was leaving me.

Just remembering the agony that rent me when he walked out the door is painful. I crumbled to the ground and wept like I've never wept. I cried harder than I thought possible. I broke. Part of me was dying, being torn from my very soul. I felt as if the earth itself was crushing me.

My friend pulled up to my house in mere minutes. I sat in her passenger seat and continued to break, bleeding salty tears. She held me, and wept with me. In time, I got out of her car, went back inside, and crawled into bed to succumb to the nothingness of sleep. I have found refuge in the oblivion of sleep. It is a blessing not to feel sometimes.

That was nearly two months ago. I have had many experiences since then. I have grown in so many ways since then. I have come to know grief as I never knew it before. I have come to know God as I never knew him before. I have become stronger than I thought I could be. Yet I still feel so weak sometimes. So broken.

The first few weeks of February were much needed escapes from the pain. I was able to find some joy with new friends that gave me hope again.

The grief has returned, though. It has reminded me that it is not gone, that it has not left. It has graced my cheeks with tears again, and sent me pleading for deliverance once again.

It has changed, to be sure. It does not feel as soul-crippling as it once did. But it still stabs with relentless endeavor when I see my ex, when I hear him laugh, or when I remember how it felt to be with him and how he chose to leave me. I am still bombarded with feelings of abandonment, of rejection, and of worthlessness.  I still am struck with painful jabs of wondering why he chose to leave, why he does not want to be mine again.

In moments of peace and clarity I gain a sense of where things weren't working, but most of the time I cannot break through the belief that had he truly cared as much as I did he would have found a way to work through the issues, that had he wanted me as much as I wanted him, he would have moved heaven and earth to be my companion.

I feel fragmented much of the time, off balance, and somewhat lost. I am doing better than I was, but I still struggle. I still cycle between denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and even acceptance, more than I would like. The switch from one stage to the next can be instantaneous, throwing me through a chaotic hurricane of emotions that drain me and bring me to my knees.

I'm so tired of hurting. I am so weary from the feelings of longing. I am tired of the sting of being unwanted. I am drained, and I ache. I beg for mercy, but deliverance comes not out of grief, but through it. I cannot rush it, nor pray it away. I must sit with it, but I am tired of it. I do not want it anymore.

I have a journal that I began about a month ago. It is nearly full, because I pour my yearnings and my grief into it. I cannot even bear to read through the previous pages. They are too painful, and I am so weary of the pain.

Some days are better than others. This morning was heavy. I wrote these verses this morning, when I could not keep the pain inside anymore:

Fragmented memories
seem brighter than life
without you.
Even the shards seem flawless.
How could you leave that?
How could you walk away?
We made the world turn,
and in trembling holies
we made time stop.
I found heaven in you.
Didn't you see it in me?

The sun feels false since you left,
a bland fluorescence,
trying vainly to be what you and I were,
to shine like we did.

I try to find you in every boy I see.
Every thought of "what if?"
is just you wearing their mask.

Cascading piano keys
seem to be the only thing
that finds me.
I keep hoping that I'll find myself
whole and new.
I lie sometimes, to make it so.
But pounding chords
and weeping runs
in minor keys
find me in a shadowed room
holding onto shattered dreams
and broken security,
pieces of what once was home.

The brittle edges have chipped
in jagged blades.
Every grasp reopens wounds
I thought had healed,
whispers pain I thought was gone.
But I can't let go.
I grip harder,
sending crimson tears
along the glass.
I can't let go.
If I let this life fall from my hands,
I don't know if I will remember
how to feel.
I fear callouses,
and I fear being without them.

In that moment,
between sleep and wake,
I almost think you're here,
almost think I can feel
your breathing.
God, I miss your breathing.
For a brief moment, we shine.
And then the lights burn out,
flickering candles in a storm.

The worst is when I forget that I hurt.
I'm left with a dissonance,
an uncomfortable incongruency.
And when I finally listen,
everything falls again,
and I break all over.
I'm tired of breaking,
tired of the shriek of
falling glass,
tired of feeling the hole
where you used to be.

I live neither then, nor now,
lost somewhere in the fragile wasteland
of what was,
and what might have been.


Finally, I want to post a video, because it is beautiful.

And I will sleep in peace until you come to me.