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The light in the kitchen is almost too bright for your eyes. You danced in this kitchen together. Feet shuffling slowly to a beat much quicker. Socks slipping over hardwood floors. Hands clasped together - palm to palm. His nose in your ear and his lips whispering the words you knew by heart, hips swaying and your face - it was smiling.
Your living room is littered with pictures of you together. Grinning. Caught mid-sentence. Walking together. Leaves falling around you and your hair blowing across your open mouth. He’s looking at you in most of them - gazing. And sometimes when you look at them in the low light of a Wednesday evening, you can see it even then. He was going to go. Going to go. Going to go. And finally. Gone. He walked away and left you in an empty house that seems like it’s too big for the matching bathroom rugs and your favorite dishes and the closets. The closets sit half empty like your bed and your toothbrush sits lonely. By itself. Your refrigerator still sits barren, useless. How do you cook for just one? You climb the stairs at night and they creak like your tired joints. You pull yourself up using the handrail and it bends under your weight. Your feet drag and the steps moan under you. Like your somehow-still-beating-heart. It’s too quiet and the unbalanced ceiling fan in your bedroom just echoes in the silence. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. It does not stop and neither did your heart when he left. You have to brace yourself when you get into bed. Mentally prepare yourself for the weight of the covers that still smell like him and how they almost suffocate you. You prepare yourself, but the onslaught still comes. Like a hurricane. Like a breathing, living, thing - coming in the night to destroy you. Every. Single. Night. Did he say he was never going to leave you? Somehow, you can’t remember. Did his I-Love-You seem like a forced prayer from a teenager in church? You can’t remember. Did he look at you when he was on top of you? You can’t remember. You just … can’t remember. Whoosh. Whoosh. Thump. Thump. Your heart still pumps blood. You are still alive when the sun rises. You are still alive. The grief - the required mourning period for him will end. You will look up from your hurt … eventually. The searing pain will subside … eventually. One day, you will realize that you are not bone deep tired anymore. You will not dread the sun rising, or your suffocating covers. You will not creak like the stairs. When your eyes close, memories will not play on repeat like some beloved horror film that you make yourself sit through and convince yourself that you actually enjoy. You will realize that you were not the one for him. He was not the one for you. Thump. Thump. He was not the one for you. You will lay again under that ceiling fan with another man, on those same sheets. Maybe he’s the one. Maybe he’s a lesson. He probably smells like truth and the toxic combination of loyalty and love. He probably holds your hand when you sleep and you’re probably still scared of your bright kitchen, could-be-too-quiet house, and the future maybe-happily-ever-afters. You’ll be scared. Scared to love too much. Scared that it’ll hurt all over again if he leaves you like The Last One. Fear and Love hold hands and they dance over that line called Faith. So, my hurt darling, put your warm fingers over your desperate-to-love heart. Feel it under your hand. Feel the Thump. Thump. Thump. Learn to dance to it again. Even if it’s not in your kitchen, and even if it’s not with Another. Even if your palms aren’t pressed against someone else’s warm palms, and even if your hips aren’t swaying with someone else’s. Dance anyway. Listen to the gentle, strong, steady rhythm of your heartbeats And call that your music. Walk forward with your last hurt tattooed across your chest as a reminder. An intimate, brazen, every day sign. A beacon - calling out to others. Calling out to you. You survived the devastation that was caused by The Last One, and you will love again. You survived. You survived. You survived. xoxo, B. Sign up for my newsletter here. |
