Losing you...

What is this dread I feel?

Deep, dark, consuming,

So consuming, it envelopes me. Like a heavy cloak I can't shrug off.

Is this what this feels like, losing you?

It's the strangest thing...

Fear clutches at my heart, grips me with the urgent desperation of one falling from a cliff, clutching on to that final rock within grasp, hanging on for dear life

Hanging on, but in futility, as the rock shifts, treacherous rock breaks loose,

and I fall, freefall into the deep dark abyss that awaits me with open arms

The pain is palpable, the sense of loss, abject...

What is this pain? What is this sense of overwhelming despair?

I writhe, I grunt, I moan, I wail, in futile desperation, like a woman in miscarriage, birthing her dead foetus, labouring...

A hard labour of the worst kind, because through it all, she knows it's in vain,

all that is coming out at the other side of this pain is dashed hope,

a lifetime of possibilities savagely cut short before it even began

Myriad emotions bubble within; anger, betrayal, hurt, a consuming sorrow,

but most of all, a bewildering shock, jolting forcefully through me with a vengeful ferocity, knocking the very breath out of me...

A restless stirring besets my sleep. I am plagued with troubled dreams, bitter sweet memories, of you and I, laughing, planning, loving...The future looks possible, we can make it, we will make it...

Then reality comes crashing, your persistent flakiness, your capriciousness, rears it's ugly head, and you dart out again, as you do, in, and out, and back in, and back out, as you have done, and as I have been loathe to let you, but somehow have done.

I hurl empty words across an empty room, a reverberating echo, as you are not there, no one is. I awake with a start, bathed in a cold sweat.

Fear is a terrible thing, and even now, it suffocates me...

But love, love it seems is something of an altogether more malignant nature.

What is this love? This stubborn love that will not let me go?

This love is worse than fear. It is excruciating, exacting actual physical pain.

Surely I did the right thing in finally walking away from you. Shutting the door and locking it firmly behind? Surely the eventual triumph of head over heart was a good thing?

I saw through your shallow pleas; it is in the nature of man, I find, to desire absolution after having inflicted unbearable pain. It helps him live better with himself, sleep better at night. It is in the nature of woman however, to deny him that self gratification, to refuse to allow him 'eat his cake and have it'. So no, you don't get to leave me, again, and yet remain a 'good guy' in your own head. To hope to do so is arrogant, and presumptuous, and obscene...

And so the die is cast, the line is drawn in the sand. Surely I am better off without you. My head knows this, with an absolute certainty, but why does my treacherous heart refuse to follow suit?

Why does it feel like my guts have been wrenched out of me? Why hasn't time healed this wound? Why does it feel like I'm losing you afresh, having already lost you before, possibly never even had you? Why does the knowledge of the finality of your departure leave me so bereft of hope?

Where is my bright and sparkly optimism, that which has been my faithful buffer?

Where is my 'can-do' spirit? My happy-go-lucky nature? My life-goes-on attitude? My no-one is indispensable ideology?

Why have these my faithful allies deserted me at this hour when I need them the most?

Above all, where is my cynicism? Why have I crumbled into this pile of moping sentimentality? Where is my practical, spunky self?

Who is this reflection I see staring back at me? I don't recognise her at all, and she disgusts me...

What have I let you do to me? Why is letting you go, the hardest thing I have ever had to do? What is this inexplicable hold you have over me? We are as different as night and day, you and I? Me with my love of the arts, and nature, and pets, and greenery, and classical music, you with your tolerance, or aspirational appreciation at best, but mostly disdain for all these things...

You were not from the beginning the man I had dreamed of, so why is it so hard to let you go now? Why do I pine like so? What exactly is it that I pine after? Is it truly you, or is it the image of you I have created in my mind, a composite of carefully selected memories, creating a version of you that may in fact differ from the reality of who you are?

There are so many questions, and not enough answers. But one thing is certain. I have to get up and leave this place. I have wallowed here for too long. I have to go over to the other side of the road. There are too many reasons why it is urgent for me to get a move on. There is a life after you, waiting out there for me, and I have to get up, freshen up, and go and meet it. And live it.

If I do it right, I know I will find rapture, and love, and wonder.

To you I say thank you, for the memories, the good and the bad. They are all part of what makes me who I am, and I know that in all, I will be a better person for having had them, and for having loved you in the unreserved way that I did.

But now, the rest of my life awaits. I will myself to jump into it with both feet.

I sincerley hope you have found what you were looking for.

Really, I do...

Now I step out into the sunshine. It's going to be a good day. HE assures me of this fact, and I believe HIM.

So long...