A Hopeful, Final Form

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​I do not sleep, because I worry I will only dream of you.
And I have not written, because I worry I will only write about you. 

To be changed so irrevocably by someone, by something. To be irreversibly altered by a love so profound that you left feeling nothing, and I have been incapable of leaving at all. To be changed. To be unable to forget. 

To be changed, and changed, and changed until there are no more shapes left for me to take.

Most days the threat of overwhelm is too severe, and I cannot give myself permission to remember us. Our time together, even with years passed since, is often too disorienting to live in the wake of.

I seem to remain stuck in a constant state of consumption, where these unavoidable attacks of memory lead to a nearly unbearable and endless wondering. What could I have done differently? I ask myself over and over and over, until exhaustion finally provides some semblance of short lived relief. Would it have been better to have never learned the lessons that came because of you, if it meant I did not have to endure the pain left by you? 

I worry it will never stop. I worry that, for years to come, I will not be able to write without writing of you.

I still sit in the stomach sometimes, of our memories and our love and our time. There are days where the acid dissolves what muscles I have left, and I wonder how- after starving for so long- there is any acid left. I struggle to understand how this pit, that I cannot seem to escape, is somehow still capable of carelessly burning this body we built. This once shared flesh that now suffers from the slow rot of deterioration and abandonment. 

I sit in the decaying space between my heart and your lungs, and wonder which artery stopped working without my noticing. I beg my own recollection for a glimpse of the moment that our vitals began to flatline. I plead for the relief of clarity in memory. I never find any. 

​Instead, I sit in the acid, and berate myself for the failure to pick up on the dying circulation that once connected my veins to your heart. Every night repeats this same cycle, where I search my memory and come up blank, only to then blame myself to sleep. I blame myself, and I blame myself, and I blame myself- and then I find the courage to beg my mind to stop blaming. It does not stop. But,

I do not miss you. 
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When you color my thoughts or consume my mind, it is not with any shade of love. The pulse point of these wonderings does not beat with any adoration or want. There is not the slightest semblance of desire for reconciliation or re-connection.

I simply think of you because I think of love, and unfortunately, I have not felt safe to love since you. But the most unfortunate part of all is that-
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I do not feel safe to love because of you. 

I do not act the same when presented with an opportunity to care once again for another. I can feel the self I have always known slip away with each attempt. No matter the strength I have been able to save, despite the brutality of our aftermath, my grip is never strong enough to stop the slipping. I cling, and I cling, and I cling until my palms sweat and my fingers are sore. Until I have to accept defeat, and let go. 

I watch who I once was- the one that loved naively and vulnerably- fade into the background with each sentence I form in the face of someone new. I no longer know how to be the person that once loved you. I do not know how to be the person that someone can love, at all.

I cannot seem to find my way back to being these better things. My most consistent nightmare has become a loop of relentless reminding, where I am constantly forced to look my most selfish fear in the face. The fear that I have lost all connection with the side of myself that felt safe to love, at all.

Despite the desperate searching, I cannot find my way back to that sense of security. I cannot seem to grasp the feeling of safety that gives breath to a life where one can feel with freedom. Without fear. I have begged and pleaded and screamed to be given even the slightest clue on how to get there. But instead, 

I have changed, and changed, and changed and I have no more shapes left to take.

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I have re-lived this ruthless cycle countless times, and ruminated long enough to remember every single sensation that comes with it- but, 

would you believe me if I said it is not current? 

Can you read what I have just recounted, and believe that there are some days I feel the argument for letting myself fall anyway begin to break through? Would you understand me, if I told you that sometimes I feel the want for emotional freedom begin to win- despite the pull of painful familiarity still tugging on my hand, simultaneously? Would you believe me, if I told you that I feel the resilient desire for connection beating against the walls of my heart- and that sometimes it even shares a pulse with my fearful and loveless nightmares? 

Would you believe that the pain I spoke of above can co-exist with the faith I will speak of next? 

Because, although I am still not clear on my belief that trusting another is an endeavor worth enduring, I continue to wait patiently until the sight is steady enough to believe- and I do not hate waiting. I do not hate the desire for this feeling of honest love that still burns inside me. I do not resent the hope for this wait to one day come to an end. This nagging feeling of wishful faith that is shoved so deep inside my soul that I could not remove it if I tried. 

An unexplainable resolve that is so thoroughly embedded in my gut that even the most precise of surgeons could not find it. Even if their cold and sterile tools opened up every inch of my conflicted body, and undid every clotted path, they would find no trace of this feeling. They would not find this hope. I do not know where it lives- but I know that, even on days I wish I could be rid of it, I somehow never lose it. I know that, even on days where this truth feels more haunting than hopeful- I will never lose it. 

How wonderful it is to know that my greatest constant remains a commitment to the belief that it gets better. 
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So, I hope.

And I hope, and I hope, and I hope until my heart finds enough peace to write without writing only about you- and then,

I sleep.




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