exploration

This story is an exploration.

It is an exploration into fear, and doubt, and hope. Into heartbreak and healing, and heartbreak again, and healing again, over and over until you can’t take it anymore and you’re screaming because you just want to live your life again without having to try so hard. Because you are trying so hard, all the time, to pretend that you are not trying so hard.

No one tells you how exhausting heartbreak is.

They warn you of the shock and the denial and the pain and the anger, yes, and those are all felt too. But when the tears are salty and dry on your cheeks, and the sobbing has lulled into deep breaths, what are you left with but the heaviness of your bones? They say love gives you life but they don’t say how the ripping away of it leaves you wondering how you ever functioned without it. Maybe another thing I should add on to the List of Things People Don’t Tell You About Heartbreak is the memory loss. I don’t want to remember a life before, but I say I can’t; I strain my eyes looking for the color in those photos but I catch only hints. Traces of reductions of watered down hues that used to shine, or so I’m told.

You think you’ve made it so far in life until you’re back at square one.

You think to yourself, I’ve got this whole emotional thing figured out. But then it is the sound of your own voice echoing back at you, no longer refracted and returned in the form of another, somehow more familiar voice to you than your own, and you’re useless again, stuck in a maze of mirrors and sick to death of your own reflection. At the same time that I want to break every mirror I want to sink so deep within myself – a place you have not been and never will be – only to find of course you have been there too. Even now I feel you around the corners of my words. I am still me, whatever that means, but you are now one of the stitches that makes me up, and to rip you out would be to unravel everything.

Ex is such a simple term.

How can two letters sum up two people? How can two letters ever contain every laugh, every kiss, every time our hands touched? The word feels too simple and the cruelty is in the simplicity or maybe in the complexity, I can’t tell. Anyone who’s anyone who cares about me knows your name so I don’t have to choke on this word too often – a small mercy. I like to just call you a friend, because you are one. Really. As time goes on I watch the romance fade, slowly, like a wave retreating from the shore, but you can find us there in the glittering sand that remains.

I am terrified of forgetting.

I hoard memories like precious jewels, something beautiful to be turned over and inspected at my leisure. The problem arises when it is no longer at my leisure but forced upon me, a song, a restaurant, a sports team, a funny remark, and suddenly I see our ghosts walking hand in hand. I want to reach out and tell them to be careful – hold on – treasure it – it will end – save this – it’s too late. They catch glimpses of me sometimes, but it is only a glitch. My words are lost in the static, but I think it is actually better this way. They don’t want to hear from me, and I want them to be happy. A smile tugs at my lips as I watch them.

That’s the thing, the love never really goes away.

We grew up together, a boy and a girl finding their way in the world. The destination was not what we wanted but the exploration was so very special. I beat my head against the wall asking myself how to stop loving you, but you will always hold a little part of me and I will always hold a little part of you, and that’s just how it will be, the love turning into that of old friends who went to war together and came back changed. There is respect, and appreciation, and remembering. There is hope and peace and acceptance.

How to move forward, then?

What happened cannot have been for nothing. These words lay me bare, broken and bloody but alive, fingers raw but typing. The hurricane raged but there is something beautiful in the destruction, dew glistening on fallen leaves and coconuts smashed open upon the ground. Sprouts grow in the form of midnight gossip sessions, new music albums, cracking up at jokes that aren’t even funny. I’m probably using too many metaphors but everything always relates to you when you’re looking for it, right? Pain breeds narcissism. I’ve always hated the thought of being narcissistic but now photos of me I would've sent to you crowd my camera roll. I’m recounting the freckles on my cheeks and the curls in my hair and the scars on my skin and when I breathe in my whole body breathes out. I stand my ground in the ocean but allow the thrashing waves to drown my thoughts. I’ve never been able to stay unhappy for long at the beach. Always the sun is too bright and the people are too loud and the air is too warm, just as it should be. The breeze flips the pages of my book and sometimes I think how terrible it is that I’ll never get to read every book I want to in my lifetime; sometimes I think how wonderful it is that I’ll never run out of them. There are so many books to read and songs to listen to and cities to visit and I want to experience it all. You can’t come with me, and that’s fine. I’ll tell you all about it.