The Day Loved Died

Today I wrote the final line in my obituary. I wrote with such force and finality that it scared me. My pen flourished on the paper as I wrote that I need time and space. Time and space to just figure this thing out. To get my head back on straight. To adjust to my new reality.

So many excuses for why things can’t be, but the truth is simply that I love someone who doesn’t and won’t love me. I sift through my emotions and watch my tears drip on the paper as I journal the pain. I know that it is my own issue. I don’t know how to separate fantasy from reality. The reality that love don’t live here. It never has. But, I wanted to make believe that you and me could be a we. Why?

Because it was wonderful in my fantasy. It was safe. It was nourishing and warm. It strengthened me in ways that I didn’t imagine. This fantasy allowed me to laugh at the silly things, feel safe in your arms and strong in your encouragement. We existed in this fantasy. Our hearts beating in synchronized and harmonized rhythm until…

I realized that my heart beat was the only one that could be heard. I was imagining the strong and steady beat of my soul mate. It was comforting until I wrote that damn obituary and realized that the only thing I heard was silence.

I just stood there crying because heartbreak was nothing new to me. Pain was a constant in my life. Hell I survived childhood and motherhood. Grief was something I had experienced before, but this pain was new to me. It was a cross between an ax chopping my heart in two and someone pouring battery acid on the still beating half. You get it right? It was…

Destructive. I watched the destruction of a dream. I loved and lost within a span of months. The dream to experience love in the purest and sexiest form as an adult. But, that dream was dead before I even closed my eyes. So, I wrote out my obituary and entitled it “Death to Love”.

It said:

Suddenly on February 20, 2015, I departed this earth. I died. Not in the physical sense, but in the emotional sense. I stopped believing in love after confessing my feelings to the man I had dated for almost a year. I opened up my soul and poured out my heart and he just sat there. No words. No emotions. Just silence. After shouting out that I fearlessly and uncontrollably loved this man and needed him to be patient with me and love me beyond measure, I realized that I was alone. Alone in this boat that he told me to ride with him and just go with the damn flow. As I poured out my heart and told him that love was foreign to me and not something I share freely with men. I listened for confirmation or affirmation that it was mutual. But there was none. Only silence. No words. So, I laughed and let him go and went home and drank a glass of wine so big that Olivia Pope would have been envious. I wrote this obituary before turning into bed and realizing that sleep would be futile. That rest would not come. My heart ached something awful and I died.

Later as I lay on the cold table in the morgue and reflected on the quietness of my mind I heard the radio playing. Someone had turned on Pandora. I heard “Step Aside” by Yolanda Adams. I heard her sing, “You have to let go and let God be God”. I gasped in air as though I had never breathed before. The pain was insurmountable but a peace was settling in my spirit.

I got up off the cold table and wrapped my body in a blanket and showered. I took the hottest shower and soaped up and washed off all the troubles of this world because I knew that I would survive. Because on that love river that I traveled God had given me a life vest and my momma had taught me how to swim.

Note: This is about a prior break-up. Not Mr. C. LOL. We are great.

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