Every year when your birthday passes, I feel the weight of another year gone.
Do you feel this way about anyone? It makes me sad to think about it. The fact that so many people love someone and cannot be with them. They live with the knowledge that the person they love walks the earth every day without them. Romantic or otherwise. It’s so painful to imagine.
And it makes me think — if given the chance to be with someone I love, why would I not take the chance? Rather than look back and regret.
It’s easier to listen to Adele and cry. And read “The Age of Innocence” over and over.
Being honest is hard. And sometimes the people you love are the people who hurt you the most.
So many people walk around carrying the invisible burden of heartache. We ride the subway to work and sit at our desks and pretend that it’s all right. And if you make yourself busy enough, you can almost forget. But one day a song will come on the radio, or you’ll pass an old familiar building, or you’ll smell an old cologne. And it will all flood back.
It’s in those private moments. A stillness that allows your senses to reconnect with the truth. The real pain that swims beneath the tough exterior — when you give yourself the space to remember and feel. Indulging for a little while in what was, or what could have been.
I imagine an elderly man watching the opera remembering a past love from his youth. Or a woman looking at her kids and remembering the husband she once loved. I think about someone reading a borrowed book and finding an annotation. The handwriting frozen in time, as if looking into the past. So tangible and yet so far away.
Or listening to an old voicemail.
I want to believe that love is real. How could it not be when so many songs are sung and so many books are written?
Love by definition is “an intense feeling of deep affection.” But I think.. to be loved is to be understood. To be loved is to be seen. To hold space for someone. To respect them. To want the best for them.
I want to believe that there is real love. That someone can truly and completely wish the best for someone, even without personal gain.
Maybe somewhere beneath all the misunderstanding and miscommunication. Beneath the overwhelming culture of short-term pleasure and selfishness — maybe a shred of something real remains.
And in the spirit of love, here are a few passages I extracted from my journals over the years. Looking back it all sounds a bit dramatic, but that’s okay. For the sake of privacy they are out of order and not dated. But you can read and infer, I suppose.
Hearing the truth (and knowing it’s my fault)
“And in that moment I swear my soul left my body. Nice and slow, it was like the scene in a movie where things are put in slow motion. The truth hit me like a tidal wave. Crash, and then washing over me. It pulled me under and tossed me around and I couldn’t breathe for a little while. I couldn’t tell which way was up anymore.
My stomach hurt, so I stopped eating. Because nothing felt real enough so I wanted to feel empty. I wanted to read all the books we talked about — and let my tears hit the pages like bookmarks. And I wanted to lay on the floor and read through years of our old texts and my old journals.
These days, I painfully relive all my mistakes when I pushed you away, creating a dull pit in the bottom of my stomach that never goes away.”
When you stand in your own way
“I am currently looking out at the most perfect view. Stunning crystal water and a golden sun not quite setting. It’s indescribable. Too perfect to put into words.
And somehow, amidst a beautiful scene, I am tormented. So interesting how all you’ve ever wanted can be yours, but taking it is the hardest part. Harder than you thought it would be.
I wish I could provide myself with some clarity, but I have none. Not yet, anyway. I live in a purgatory between the past and the future. Not understanding my own actions. Floating in a fog, losing sense of my surroundings. It’s peaceful at times, but confusing and complicated.”
Reminders
“I saw a fleece sweatshirt today and it made me sad. It made me sad because he was wearing a fleece sweatshirt the night I saw him last week. I remember liking it — I thought it was a little funny to wear fleece on a mildly warm spring evening. But it looked comfortable and casual. And it looked good on him, because he looked good.
And now, for some reason, seeing fleece makes me sad.
Sometimes when I am processing things, I feel like I am in an alternate state in which I have to be alone. In a way, I am taking off a bandage to check the progress of my wounds. A moment that is best left uninterrupted, because you don’t want a random bystander to see your scars.
Privacy in order to heal. As if being around people would require me to function like a normal person again. Front a cheery disposition. Ask how their day is going.
Alone, I am deep in thought.
In an ocean of memories, I need to come up slowly to the surface, adjusting to the pressure change.”
Trying to move forward
“How do I feel today? The same as usual I suppose. Great, but also sick to my stomach a little bit. Being heartbroken is weird because I literally feel sick to my stomach all the time, but I don’t really mind it. And I am doing things that make it worse for myself. Reading old texts — that fills my whole body with the strangest feeling. As if I woke up from a dream, but the evidence is here in real life. It’s all there, it all happened.
I think I’m addicted to the feeling. It feels like I am bleeding out.
These days when people tell me about their relationships, I start to tear up. Sometimes I hide my eyes behind my sunglasses. It’s strange to see everything in a new light.
I started to wish we could experience everything together. As simple as it sounds, even a Saturday afternoon drinking coffee on the couch.”
Seeing you in a dream
“I had a dream last night that we got dinner and you weren’t everything I remembered about you. It was strange. I thought today about how you turn twenty-six soon. About a month from now. And another year passes by.
I don’t really have a right to any of it. I think about you sometimes, but who am I to think of you? Is it even fair to you that I do? Maybe you would rather I forget.”
Another great thought piece
For this one, I will just say “Thank you”.