How is it that I can spend so much time and energy building a life, a shared life, or sometimes even just my own life, and then in an instant, that I all too often do not see coming, it is just gone?
Over.
Done.
How is it possible for your life to be building in momentum and flourishing and in one conversation, one moment, it all just stops?
What are you supposed to do with all the hopes and dreams you had for that life?
What are you supposed to do with all the love that you still feel for the person?
Where do you put that now that the recipient is no longer in your life?
Or perhaps they remain still but the relationship altered to something you no longer recognize.
Relationships end. This is part of life and loving. But it still seems so shocking to me how it all just seems to vaporize, the tender relations tended to daily, now just gone. Moved onto some other place in the recesses of your life. And you theirs.
I know it likely happens less suddenly than I feel. It is a slow erosion with a pivotal event. And it is that pivotal even that makes it all seem to turn to steam. Only misty vapor when once there was love, commitment, longing, need, companionship and constancy.
What is one supposed to do with all the plans already in motion?
What is one supposed to do with all the unfinished projects that required this other person to complete?
Do you scrap the whole endeavor? Limp along without them and see what you can salvage?
And the question that I ask all the time, what in the fuck are you supposed to do with all the love you still feel?
Where exactly do you put that?
I could make a good argument that you turn the love toward yourself. It does seem the best idea and the most productive. But these relationships turned to mist don’t always leave you feeling all that much love for yourself. Instead, regret, self doubt and sometimes, self destruction are all that is left in love’s wake.
I remember in the aftermath of my decision to leave my marriage, feeling like I was alive again. Sometimes that was painful in and of itself. Like coming to the knowledge that you were in fact sleepwalking and had little to no memory of what you were doing and why. The dawning awakening bringing home this idea that you had missed something vitally important but you can’t quite put your finger on it...
This time, I am just walking forward. I do not feel I have been asleep. Just perhaps tired from all the running away from myself that I did. All those truths that were ringing so loudly in my head that I failed to see or heed. Those are making me so tired now.
Running away from yourself is exhausting but not impossible. I know for a fact that you can do it successfully for years.
But, for me anyway, I have to deal with the love that remains despite the relationship being dissipated into vapor. Running is always an option, but in this case, it seems rather silly to run from vapor. It is not an apparition or ghost, it is just perhaps the resulting conclusion to all that you attempted, all you tried, and now in your confusion, vapor is what is left.
You cannot hug vapor to you. And perhaps, that is the point after all?
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