Letting Go… And Going Home

I’m trying to let go and it hurts. It hurts so much.

Today feels calmer… the waves are more mellow, but the pain is just as deep. I notice myself tiptoeing around the thoughts that will send me spiraling all over again… avoiding looking at certain parts of the room, touching the wrong side of the bed, walking past the window where I watched you leave…

I can’t stand that beach anymore.
It burns like you and my heart can’t take it.

The ocean doesn’t sing to me. In your absence, she just crashes.

A constant reminder of the jagged wound that is my heart and the hole where you were ripped away from me.

I’ve always been the strong one, the one to face her pain and fears and grief head on. The resilient one.

I’m amazed at how quickly my mind worked through each phase of grief yesterday. But pain won’t be rushed and my heart longs to hold you still.

I’m giving up, for a while now.
I don’t want to be the strong one today.

I’m not sure that I can, honestly.
I think that maybe I’m not the kind of person who should be alone.

I could have done it before… been strong enough all by myself.
But I never knew joy like what you showed me

and to be filled to overflowing with that, and then watch it slip away…

I struggled to hold onto life before I knew this pain
and it doesn’t feel safe to test my strength all by myself this time.

I’m walking away from the ocean, from my beautiful forest and this coastal highway.
I’m going back to the desert where my family can hold me and my roots can rest…

I need to be somewhere I’m not holding my breath, where I can’t wait for you to call me back into your life, watching seconds tick by one crushing disappointment after another.

I wonder if maybe the calling all these years was really just serendipity bringing me to you. There has to be a reason.

I’d still take you back in a heartbeat
at the slightest promise things would be good again.

But we can’t do that right now.
You don’t really want me, you showed me that.

You want space, you want freedom.
You need that more than my love.

I always wanted you to have your freedom more than anything.
Loving you enough to let you go was always just a matter of time in the beginning.

It was when I started to believe that maybe this could last,
maybe we were it… maybe that’s where it all went wrong.

God, I wanted to keep you.
To be yours.

I’m looking around me at the ruins now…
Grateful… full of sorrow… disappointed… a little lost.

My hope is clouded. Even my kitty is gone. My faith is shaking.

I know I’m stronger for it all.
I know I can move bigger mountains for all of this.

And I know that the part of me I’m leaving behind on this coast will always love you with her whole heart.
She’ll always want you back, take you back, joyfully invite you in with warmth and love…

It’s time for the rest of me to go home, though.
There was nothing I wanted more than this life here with you… and now that you’re gone, I just can’t bear to stay.

It was my dream once, but all that’s left of it now is the way you linger in every tree and breeze… like sand paper against my raw heart.

I hope that someday a new dream will find me.
I have to believe it will.

I love you. I’m sorry. Goodbye. Don’t go. Come back. I’ll miss you. It hurts. I can write all day long, but the words will never quite get it right.