The plane landed weeks ago, my baggage finally arrived...

Letting go of certain things is infinitely easier said than done. It’s amazing to me that despite all of the progress I’ve made toward getting away and branching away from things that held me back, certain hallmarks of that time can send me reeling. The mention of a band, anything that elicits a memory of that time, the truth is that as strong as I like to believe I am, I’m more fragile now than I think I’ve ever been. I’m reaching for anything solid to hold onto the only thing I find is the haunting glow of what was. I’m conflicted with myself over whether I did something wrong, if I failed, if it was my fault that everything fizzled.

Just happening over a picture is enough to leave me cringing. It’s amazing how passion can be both a blessing and a curse. My passion drove me to unparalleled lengths to profess, declare, and validate my love and affection for someone seen as so undeserving, and now it sends me into an emotional rut that borderlines depression and guilt over all the whispered wrongs. The entirety of the saga played out before my eyes and I remained stoic and unmoving as I watched the train of finality barreling down to destroy me. But I let it happen. I tried to play the martyr, hoped that my soul’s tempering in the fires of my youth would be enough to protect and see me through the crash.

I did survive, but what is it exactly that remains. I’ve still not let go completely and I’m jaded against myself for that. Part of me sees it as a weakness that I could be made to feel so small, so fragile, and so utterly vulnerable and all because of one person. To be stripped of my veneer and left exposed before the clawing eyes of my peers for them to judge, inspect, and influence.

Taken from me are the trappings of vitriol and venomous observations of those foolish enough to keep my association. I don’t know who to be angry at, myself for believing the lie, her for being so easily manipulated into dooming us before we had a chance to begin, or the cosmos for damning us to this horrific cycle of futile defiance. I swore to myself I would never love, I would never feel like I felt for her, and my conscious mind, my rational thoughts failed me completely, and I fell headlong into the damnation of my psyche by letting myself feel anything more than a passing intellectual interest for her. The human heart holds the greatest weakness possible for those that would seek a life devoid of vulnerability.

So very few in this world know what it is to truly be open and completely vulnerable to another human being; to truly open oneself up to another human being; to really trust another person. The concept is infinitely easy to reason, you ask for trust and because someone tells you things that seem to be of a personal nature, you accept that they have made an emotional investment in you. The sad reality is that trust isn’t built on the things you’re willing to say, but rather the things you can’t bring yourself to put into words. I’ll tell almost anyone about the sordid details of my youth, the abuse I endured, or the depreciation I suffered at the hands of those in a position to engender a pain for which there was no cure, but only a select few know any kind of truth or trust from me.

But here I am, I made the choice to open up and expose the soft belly beneath my armor and I ended up with a stake through my heart. I thought by ignoring it I could make it go away. I reasoned that if I felt nothing then I couldn’t hurt. I tried to fill the void with trappings that were ultimately unwanted and unfulfilling. In the end there’s nothing left except to say that I am the victim of my own machinations. It is said that we reap what we sow, but it’s near impossible for me to accept this since I endeavor to be all things to all people, go to extraneous lengths and undertake absurd endeavors in an effort to help those around me and the one point in which I invariably fail is when it comes to finding any kind of true happiness. I tried to fulfill her every need tried to always make myself available and endeavored to never say no and I have nothing to show for the endeavor. Perhaps the biggest error I made was that I tried to understand her, attempted to really get to know the person behind the witty remarks.

But people aren’t puzzles, they’re not meant to be dissected and figured out. She was never mine to understand but still I committed my mind to solving the mystery, to winning her heart and calling her my own. Now I just feel broken, unable to move forward and still mired in my own hell, searching for reasons, for understanding, for some kind of clarity to something I never fully understood to begin with. The scary part is that for perhaps the first time in my life I have no direction or inclination on how I should feel or react. The raw passion ebbs and bristles at the sides of an already battered psyche and I search for an answer that is never going to come. For me, the idea of accepting that reality is akin to rewriting the laws of gravity. But acknowledging that I am completely powerless to influence the will and whim of someone else is not only staggering but makes me feel completely impotent. A kind of stifled, listless energy that seeks a release and the best that can be found is a gasp of air every once in a while. It’s like lightning in a bottle; the energy is contained but not gone. I need to find my own release and let go of the baggage, let go of her, and find some reason other than just the pedantic ideation that life is worth living to keep pressing on in the maelstrom.

Gone are the harsh words, the terse edicts, the flagrant verbal attacks, the clandestine moves of subversion and intrigue, and the tears for a love that never was. In their place is a gap, an abyss that hungers to be filled by any means necessary. That abyss is the hole she left when she went away, the love she took with her, and the part of my soul I will never get back. I could fill it with drugs, alcohol, countless vapid women, or just the ramblings of my own depraved mind, but in the end the only way to fix a wound that big is to find sutures capable of making me forget all that she was. To erase everything I thought I knew, all memory of what was and what I believed could have been. Find me the tools to mend myself and correct this broken state of mind I now harbor. Point me to the smiling shiny happy people and I will gladly become another mindless drone in the scheme of the universe, oblivious to the world around me and never more involved in it than what is within my reach. I would gladly give up the very thing that keep me grounded, useful and unique in exchange for making the wound go away, making the pain cease, and leaving me with nothing more than a fake plastic grin to wear and show to everyone that I am not as broken as I truly am.