They say there are stages of grief that people experience. For example, when someone dies, you go through denial and anger and even sadness. I’m learning though that someone doesn’t literally have to die for you to feel all of those things. They just have to leave your life and you can still go through all of the various stages. Several times even.
I have my bad days and good. There are times that I know I am okay and over it. I feel very little if anything and I don’t look back much at all. Those are what I consider really good days and I can only hope that they keep happening with more frequency.
Then there are the other days ... the ones where I hurt and truly feel the loss that I am suffering. The death of my dream and of the love that I had found. I’m not sure that I miss the person as much as the fantasy that they created in my heart. The feeling that I experienced by only having them in my world and my heart for the last few years. However, sometimes late at night, like it is now, it is hard to know the difference. What I wouldn’t give to feel your arms around me and to hear you say “just don’t give up on me” like you used to.
I keep waiting for the “poke”—the time that I am going to open my email and see something from you or get a text on my phone that you sent. So far it hasn’t happened and if I am being really honest with myself, we all know that it is never going to. I think I just want to believe that somehow I am wrong and that you still aren’t ready to let me walk away, but that would just be prolonging the fantasy, wouldn’t it? I feel it in my gut. You are as done with me as I have to be with you and there just simply isn’t anything left for us to say. In my dark inner self, where I don’t like to ever let others go, I am desperately disappointed that you let me have the last word and moved on with such ease. Yet on the outside, I keep playing it cool like everything is going as it should and I am not surprised by any of it.
I wish there were words of wisdom that someone could speak to me to magically make this all much easier to accept and go through but I can’t imagine what they would be. I know I have to go through the pain to have any shot at being happy again but that doesn’t make it any easier to do. Days like these, I fear that the physical pain that I feel may never go away. That the vulnerable part of me will always be there and that the strong will stay hidden for good. Rather than me changed for the better by all of this and having learned a valuable lesson, I will be damaged and scarred.
I just want to lay down now and pray that tomorrow is a better day. A stronger day. One of the good days. I want to believe that there will be a day in my future when I don’t think of you at all and I don’t have visions in my head of things that will never happen. No chance encounters that end like Pretty Woman. No big scenes in a public place with a passionate reunion. And most of all, a day where when I open my email and I don’t look for your name and secretly hope for a few words to reaffirm your lack of feeling for me. Please Lord, let that day come soon.
