"A man may call a pretty girl and perhaps be welcomed back again."
Sometimes I still wake up and have to remind myself that it wasn't just a bad dream. That the last two months were real. Every bit of pain. Every twinge of sadness. Every missed beat. The heaviness in my chest and undeniable sense of longing. And when I go to bed I wish with everything I have left, everything I still have left to give, that things were different. That time would stop, reverse, erase itself.
But even if I could turn back time, even if I could go back to before January 20th when he made the decision he did...it wouldn't change anything. It wouldn't change who he is or how much I meant to him. Was there anything I could have done? Anything I could have said? Had I not given him every part of me worth loving, and loved him back without condition and without judgement?
Eventually I have to stop blaming myself and accept that there wasn't anything I could have done to change the way things ended. They were destined to end the moment they began, if I'm being honest. And not because I didn't try. But because he told himself from the beginning that he wasn't ready for the kind of things I was ready for. All the signs were there. So eventually I have to stop blaming him too, because that's just who he is and where he is in his life. I want more than anything to believe he's the person I fell in love with. There is no worse feeling than losing the person you love, and questioning whether that person existed in the first place. I think he's capable of being better than that. At least, I hope for his sake because even after all of this I think he deserves love and kindness and patience. When he is ready, I hope he'll let somebody in who can give him that.
So what now? What about me? Where do I go from here? It's been so incredibly hard to find myself through all of this. I guess that's what you get when you let love blind you. Take you over. Become your whole world. So it crumbled. Everything I worked so hard for over the years was gone. Every bit of confidence and self assurance, gone faster than it took for her to upload that photo. My world was upheaved and everything was broken. I'm still broken.
And now there's this...this beacon of perpetual light and hope. This never ending source of happiness and affection and I'm too broken or messed up or too full of self-loathing that I can't just embrace it and admit it's what I've needed all along. Because then what? I fall in love. I let my guard down. I let somebody take care of me the way I crave to be taken care of. And then that's it? Or maybe he breaks my heart. At least I saw it coming from all the other scum bags. But what if I let him in, and he starts to see this perfect girl is not so perfect. Not even close. I'm back where I started.
I don't think I know what I deserve yet.
So this is what I've got so far. I HAVE to be okay on my own. I have to respect myself. Love myself. Worship myself. Accept every single one of my flaws as definitive pieces of me. Embrace them. Because if I don't know who I am, and respect that, how can I expect anyone else to?
I wish I could write songs.
"I'm not a stranger to the wonders of your silence. I want to be there when the walls all fall away. So I can see all of the things that made me love you. Just a smile, a simple smile on your face."
