(Note: relationships are complicated. They have a beginning, a middle and an end. This is an essay about how I coped with the end of a powerful relationship in my life. I’d found a way to direct the pain away from me—finally.)
Eighteen pages. Handwritten. Single spaced.
I poured out my emotions, my feelings, my guts that had welled up inside of me over the last two years since the end of that two year relationship. Not really sure how to count—is that 4 years?
Out it came. Like a flood of ink channeling the years of want, desire, disappointment and grief onto each page. Not in any particular order. Starting as a letter and morphing into an essay or script. It was me talking to her. The “conversation “ I never got to have.
Then, one by one, I wadded up each page into a loose ball. Into the stainless steel bowl they went. And with a glass of water standing by I torched the lot of them. At first a flame, then receding embers and finally ash. The remnants of love lost, of ecstasy and pain, of lost possibilities. All there in a pile of black and white soot.
It was done. I felt cleansed. Until you love hard you really don’t know the depth of pain.
Maybe now the script playing in my head will slowly wind down to off.
Relentless
