I'm angry, passionate, desperate, hopeless. What gives? I watch ballerinas twirl in spotlights held by lovers, encouraged and applauded. I glance over it all, remember that my membership card has been cut.
You gave me that light. I am bored in this night of stories, bored of being in the audience for a production I never asked to attend, one in which I'm too tired to participate. Bored with my own self, and this missing you.
Walking out the door, around the corner, I see her. Calgary. Open arms, open love, open compassion, big open smile. I'll stay a bit longer. Wrapping myself around her feels healing and safe. I sink into the surprise of her presence. She asks about you. I hang my head. The room is filled with many of the best I've known and taken from my past, want in my future. Save for you. Where are you? It should be enough, to round the corner and see Miss Calgary. We go to the time our friendship was formed. She thanks me for always defending her, and she means it. It should be enough to be thanked tonight. That's a lot; it should be more than enough.
How are YOU? Ah, she means it, and she listens to the answer. My growing awareness that all we went through matters not at all but for this feeling now. She makes my pain safe and healing in her arms. She tells me it will be okay. In her voice, I believe it to be true. In my voice, she hears the battle between hanging on and letting go. The wanting to heal, save for still being pummeled on the field.
All the love tonight, all the feelings and comfort, left me lost. There's one I miss, only one. Damn you for your absence. Damn me for not figuring a way to forge this path alone. For being the first one to leave the night, and I'm sure the only one to cry my way home. This time, this present, for all the faces and smiles and love I felt tonight, I can honestly say I'm so selfish that it is not enough. It's not you, it's not us, it's not the magic. It's not enough. It may be one day, it may be enough to fulfill me. Some day I might find myself there, deeply satisfied among the faces, the connections. But tonight I am not. Damn this loss, this yearning, this lonely missing you, this broken down hope. Damn this pain you left in the dust of your absence.
You tell me. Are you having as much fun?
And a strange dust lands on your hands, and on your face. On your face.
4 comments:
damn.
Sometimes, the kindest thing anyone can do is let go. Holding so tightly can cut when the pull is great enough. Never easy to do, but sometimes the letting go is the only answer we have left.
In a way, I'm lucky, I suppose. In my life, that Other has always made it easy for me to let go. They've moved away, or, in the case of my ex-wife, said so many nasty things that letting go was far easier than holding on.
He made his choice and now you both pay the consequences of that. I hope he'll finally let go, so you can, too.
Alison, I think you are right, and some 'dust' landed on him, too. And I'm glad you have found this way to deal with your emotions. It will be here some day for you to come back and read - and see how very far you have come. Because we grow through pain. And when you walk out the other side of it, you will be stronger.
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