Sometimes, we want to be anonymous, to disappear in the crowd, to go unnoticed. At other times, it seems important to be recognized, appreciated, known… we long for a human connection, something meaningful and enduring. The lucky ones find it. So many never do... And some want it so badly they destroy themselves in the illusion…
Today I left those who begged me to stay. I have failed much in my life, then picked up and moved forward again. Alone… Always alone… No one has ever cared enough to question my reasons for leaving. Yet today, there was love, and open hearts, and pleading eyes asking me to stay. And still I walked away… Yes, there is a dream I follow, but today my vision is too blurred to see it, my senses too dulled by pain to feel it. I sit here struggling to understand, fumbling through feeble attempts at reasoning with myself, aching with aloneness I haven’t felt the equal of. Why am I not hardened by now? Why am I not cold? I don’t want to feel anything if it means I must feel this shredding of my soul again and again. Hope is a dreaded thing, a light to be avoided… yet I am continuously drawn there, as a moth to a flame. Scars are thick from a lifetime of seeking the heat of a love which is true, of reaching out, wanting warmth, needing to belong somewhere, only to be burned by the fires of guarded hearts. Knowing this and knowing that today I left the only place I have ever felt wanted makes me question my sanity. The hope I had in finding a better way flickered and died today. The hope I believed in was an illusion. There is nothing left but a gaping wound… the same empty, aching hole in my heart that nothing seems to fit. Lying here in the rubble, I wonder if my heart should have stayed where it was wanted. To matter to someone is a rare and precious thing. I wonder if I can ever stop reaching out. If I pull my arms out of their sockets, would that help? If I cauterize my soul as it bleeds out all of my focus and determination, staining the dying grass a colorless shade, would it give up this dangerous game it plays with love? If I pull it all inside myself, can I keep my core warm enough to survive, or should I simply let go and fade away? I’ve heard that dying from the cold is like entering a peaceful sleep… I would like to sleep again… Clearly there is no reason to continuously reach for the flame. I fear I will never know the warmth that I so dearly long for, but only the pain of getting close to the fire.
