Dry Fall

It was a dry fall

Hardly enough rain to satisfy her Northwest roots

The leaves crunched under her feet as they pounded down the pavement

She watched him leave

Bag slung over his shoulder like a jaunty cowboy

It was a sight she was familiar with

She’d seen it before.

Too many times before.

It must have been love

Or something just like it

Because she’d never wanted something so badly

And been willing to work as hard as she possibly could for it.

The fear that it still wouldn’t be enough was paralyzing

And she couldn’t breathe for fear of upsetting a delicate balance

 - one that in reality, hadn’t existed for a while…

At the end, it turned out to be a waiting game

Continuing to go on, waiting to see when their paths would cross again

Always waiting waiting waiting for something that would just happen

Spontaneously, as if neither of them had any control

It was a dry fall

And she turned away from him walking away from her.

She couldn’t watch it again

For fear that her tears would trigger the rain.

imaginary futures

It is strange to meet someone, to know someone that you can see your life with.  Your entire life.  Marriage and babies and old age - forever and ever amen.  It happens with more frequency than we realize, and for every time two people meet and develop expectations for each other, there have to be many many more who end up parting ways than those who stay together.

And it's a strange feeling - to feel the connection so intensely with someone that you not only can see the next hour, the next day, the next year with them, but the next decade and beyond...  To see a lifetime, perhaps not the where or what, but the with whom.  It is exciting - and terrifying.  It takes us out of our selfish selves, wanting to give for someone else - to meld lives, even at the risk of sacrificing for yourself.  To meet someone who complements your personality in those intricate and special ways...it can feel like a fairy tale.

Yet, it's not always that happy ending.  For whatever reason, it doesn't always work, and sometimes that is for the better, sometimes not.  But it doesn't stop that feeling of the future you say being ripped away from you, being replaced by a vast dark nothingness.  Of fear, of doubt, of unknowing how to continue to move forward.  Like most things, it will just take time.  Lots of time.  Time to forget those things that made you see in the first place the next forty, fifty, sixty years.  Time to distract yourself with other things, other people, to try to relearn how to do those everyday things that used to remind you of that person.  To cut ties to him or her, literally if you have to.

It is more than love that creates this feeling - perhaps a childish fantasy of a "happily ever after" instilled in us by society.  To meet the person you think could be "the one" - even if it's the 100th "the one" you've met, never feels like less than breathtaking, never seems less than miraculous.

And you must learn to breathe again, learn to break from the autopilot that is all too easy to snap into as a reaction to this loss.  To build a future for yourself in your head - one in which that other person doesn't exist, one in which you take back your preferences - no longer needing to compromise.  It is hard.  It.  Is.  Hard.

There are questions I don't know the answer to anymore.  There are pieces of myself that I had left behind that I struggle to find again, and pick up.  And there is a hole.  I believe that in time, much of it will heal - but not all.  Having never done this before, I do not know, but I imagine that there will be a part of me that cannot heal, a part that will always stay in that mystical future that long ago faded away. I'm not going to be ashamed of it - a sign that I loved and I lost.

What my own future holds now is a mystery, yet to come.