Some Would Say I Should Let It All Go. Let Go Of The Love. Forget The Memories. Im Only Hurting Myself

Some would say I should let it all go.  Let go of the love.  Forget the memories.  I’m only hurting myself by hanging on.

Then I realize, it is never wrong to love someone, even if they do not return it.

2024/02/23

Lament

Before I let go of you, I thought I could find happiness. When I let go of you, I thought I would find happiness.

I was wrong.

2024/03/06

She was the Right Person for Me

Originally written and posted April 10, 2012, edited in 2024

Years pass, and still I dream about her – dreams more real than most I have.  Dreams of being in her presence, just nearby, not too close. She allows me there, her kindness shining so bright.  But you cannot stare at the sun for long.  The vividness of the dreams are so strong. Music drifts through as I watch moments of simple pleasures.  A glance, a kind word; emotion packed into a Christmas ornament, the sweetness of her smile.  I try to tell her that I am okay, but that I still feel.  I feel.  In those moments, in my dreams, I have more feeling, more emotion than I have at any other time.  So often, I feel dead inside, dull and unmoved.  Yet in those moments, in those dreams, the feelings are so deep, I weep and find myself waking, physically moved.

As I wake, feelings both warm and sad sag around me like a heavy quilt, and I remember the counterweight that pulls down on my soul. I recall with fondness the tea cups and doilies, the potpourri and polish, and I think of “Frasier”.  Yes, “Frasier” the television show, and Martin, the father – a duct-taped Laz-Y-Boy versus an elegant Armani.  But that was just a show, and fathers and sons are so different.

She was the right person for me.

I understand London and Hamburg, and La Ville-Lumière.  And there she is again in my life, because I imagined the “Champs-Élysées”, but I would need her help to spell it right – I haven’t the skill to find it in a dictionary.  I pray that someday she will dine with the Queen, or a Prince, or the President, and she can savor all the flavors of the accouterments and circumstance.  For me, the proper fork is tricky. Dining straight from the box the meal came in is satisfying enough. You can hold the sun in your gaze for too long, and when you do, you blind yourself, and you diminish the sun’s brilliance and wonder.

I was a cowboy with a tea cup.  One will destroy the other.  Her beaming personality and light called me to her worlds.  But as I tried to don that suit, I felt itchy and fettered, and my saddle slipped away. My dirt dulled the brightness of her porcelain, and cracked the firmness of her reach, and it should never have been so. She deserves all the splendor and wonder she seeks.  I am content in jeans, and it seems I am unable, and unwilling, to elevate beyond them.

I wake, physically weeping from the dreams, feelings so deep from only a remembered smile.  Her real life warmth and bubble are so strong that she is still able to send me a kindness, even if just in make-believe.  She bettered me, and does to this day.  She was the right person for me. But I was not the right person for her.

No Undo, No Do Overs

2024/02/18

Life is not like a software program, it also is not a game.  There is no Undo button, and Do Overs.

I have fought my way through andropause, the midlife crisis.  I am now on the downhill slope, the inevitability of mortality squarely in front of me.  They say you should not have any regrets.  I cannot help feeling that I do have one major regret, though I also know I do not.

On one hand, I regret leaving her.  I have returned to my former self.  Life is calmer.  I understand I need space to recharge my social batteries.  I now know what it would take to live with someone and keep peace with her, and myself.  I have not found a companion, perhaps because everyone is gauged against my ex, but mostly because my introversion makes meeting people extremely difficult.  The chance that another Elizabeth, full of cheer and exuberance, will plunk herself down beside me is very unlikely.  Lightening does strike more than once in the same place but only at the highest points, not in the lowest valleys.

I regret that I let go of that love.  I have learned what we had was indeed love, the way we all think it should be.  Feelings so deep they cling to you with an unshakeable static.

On the other hand, in a frightfully human and dissonant way, I also do not regret leaving her.  I left for the right reason.  I have calmed down, my hormones settled and my former self lives anew, but I am still not the right person for her.  I am still that cowboy in jeans who enjoys box lunches, and she is still that princess in flowing gowns who enjoys high tea.

Some would argue, ‘Learn new things.  Take a chance.  Go get you some.’  Though I must recognize, it has been many years.  While I have surfed the rough waters of my own self, she has also climbed her own mountain.  My love for her has not faded, but what of her love?  Though she has sent small kindnesses my way, she has every right to be bitter.  If not bitter, totally void.  Early on, she asked me to respect boundaries, which I have.  That is why Santa is a bit secret.  I have learned that many people survive breakups by executing clean cuts – no hatred, no malice; the other person simply becomes all but nonexistent.

It would be rude and inappropriate for me to ‘take a chance’, as I respect the boundaries, and I am still the wrong person for her.  But I will never let go of the love.

Remembering

You gave me the photo albums,

Wanting to erase your memories.

Sometimes, I wish I could too.

But then I think,

It is better to remember love,

Than to forget.

2024/02/23

I Am Alone

Originally Written and Posted July 10, 2012, edited in 2024

I am alone.

The dream was like most dreams.  Something observed.  Something I was a part of, yet detached from.  It began as an odd, nonsensical musing about the American Indians battling their oppressors.  The scene quickly shifted to strange, almost Dickens-like imagery, an odd series of narrow water locks, more like flumes, and youngsters fooling their betters out of cups of cream with feats of magic and escape-style trickery.  Large whale-like creatures rocked the small boats that worked through the locks, each whale larger than the one before, as if Escher himself had a hand in the maze like twists and turns of the locks, and the creation of the whales.

Suddenly we were in a home.  I say, ‘we’, while I was clearly all by myself, I could feel her.  I was more than just me – I was a part of a ‘we’.  She was in another room, getting ready for something.  This home was not like any place I have ever been, and yet it felt familiar. Upscale, with all the flourishes that bring her comfort.  She was bustling about, filling the air with her bounce, as she always did.  I was in a vulnerable, prone spot in some back corner of some back room.

She appeared in the open door of the room where I lay, and said, “Well, I’m on my way. Won’t be back tonight, and then tomorrow, we’ll be off.”  She had that slight English lilt that she adds when she uses her favorite British phrases.  But, “we’ll be off,” did not mean we were going for some ride.  As casually as she said it, the phrase was devastatingly final.  Panic ran through me.

I chased after her as she stepped out of the front door.  “What?” I yelled, but she did not hear or did not respond at first.  Outside, the yard is covered with the flotsam of a moving day.  Neighbors and passersby are picking at the debris like crows on a carcass, yet the sun was shining and the air was damp with morning dew.  I made it to the porch where I felt the need to cower behind a pillar, in retreat from the busybody collectors.  She cheerily flipped her shawl over her shoulder and helped a Mr. Butler to negotiate the purchase of a garden hose by one of the neighbors.

Then she turned, looked at me and responded to my earlier cry.  “Oh, didn’t you know?  I won’t be coming home tonight, and then tomorrow, we’ll be off.”  I understood it from our reality.  She would be working out of town, and appended to that was, “we’ll be off.”  Not “off” as in leaving for a trip, but “off” as in the turning out of a light.  I felt the sorrow swell up in me.  I could feel the corners of my mouth curl down, like a child about to bawl.  I clung to the bit of column I crouched behind, hiding from the crows.  I peeked out to catch a fading glimpse of her as she gave Mr. Butler a final word and began to head to her car.  “I’m sorry,” I cried, the tears swelling up as I cowered and clung to the pedestal, avoiding the gaze of the neighbors.  I watched her as she drove away.

I woke, the sorrow thick.  I am alone.