three months later

i haven't exactly shyed away from talking about this to anyone in real life, so i figured i'd take a crack at writing about it in my shielded bubble of a blog. if you're reading this, thank you for stopping by, even if the space seems small and subsequently intimate.

sometimes, i feel like i'm indulgent. maybe incredibly so. my heightened emotional subjection clearly supports this claim, where little wins become triumphs and reality checks become devastations. despite the actual mundanity of my life, i tend to see the world as this grand, beautiful place where so much good is to be given and discovered and cherished. i look for the best in people and places and experiences.

i'm rarely disappointed, but when it inevitably happens, it crushes me. not because something bad happened, but because i come to believe i deserved it. a moment where i spoke or held my tongue between my teeth has now cost me the right to give good and be good and receive good. i'm devastated, and honestly, it takes me a long time to pick up the shattered pieces of my visions. 

i didn't know how or what i was going to feel since hitting this benchmark. i remember vividly where i was during that first month, gripping both ends of the same emotional rope in the greatest tug-of-war stalemate ever seen. half of me was hopeful for the unanimously praised medicine known as time to soften the blow and patch up the chasmic cracks torn into my heart. i prayed for the frayed ends of a string dyed red to crosshatch a pattern that would deem it useable again, even if it would never look the same. and the other half was terrified. i was dreading the predetermined fate of the clock, where every day meant what had happened was real. every hand that ticked dug into and under my skin, reminding me that i'd never get back what was lost and my relationship was nothing more than two briefly-paused ships resuming their passings in the night. i'd once again come to spend more and more moments alone, until they'd file under all of my recent memories. and soon enough, they'd become my only memories. 

and now i'm here, unfamiliar to the two people i thought i knew well. one of them is, inevitably, myself. the feelings and thoughts and philosophies i once harnessed now belong to someone i consider no more than a distant third or fourth cousin. i'm sure i speak the same. i'm sure i walk the same and, without inspiration, i definitely dress the same. but i don't smile like i used to. i try and replicate it with my makeup, but the corners of my lips feel weighted with stones and the skin's cracked and painful. forcing it is fruitless. i struggle to recognize the girl in the photos i stare at for hours on end, because her face belongs to someone in love. it's strange. i remember that i felt it, yet, even when i try, i can't anymore. the nights where i'd close my eyes and reunite with my past lover used to be relief from my grim reality, but now, it's nothing more than agony. the girl i'm envisioning in those scenarios surely cannot be me. she's really just a stranger. a lofty idiot that doesn't know anything about the world.

god, i miss her.

i'm not sure if this is just a me problem, but i found it a lot easier to forgive the other person than to forgive myself. i think it's just a testament to how everything went down. a breakup forces us to look at ourselves from a lens of worth, both tangible and apparently capped off. the other side of things, the ugly side, surfaces and repaints every interaction and touch once believed to have been the cure for despair. i thought we were moving at the same pace, our footsteps so synced that it caused the ground to light up beneath us. and finally, the truth was admitted-- we couldn't be further away from one another. and i can't even blame him. i tried and tried and tried. i cursed out his name and erased away what little of him i'd captured and took surface-level comfort in my friends' pity and sympathy when i relayed events. none of it worked. i still find myself in love and invested and admiring him for doing the right thing and manning up. to me, he was just saving himself from something he never truly wanted. and it made it realize i was someone who wound up incapable of being truly wanted. surely, it was about me in the end. when i look down, i'm the only one whose hands are stained red. if life is as unfair as i've come to believe it to be, then i was no better than Themis, stripping away the same right from him in an attempt to feel my happiest. 

the hurt that i still cling onto no longer comes from him or his actions. i've forgiven all of it long ago, and what i truly want is for him to be happy. my feelings and wishes have always remained the same, in that regard. the pain instead stems from something completely out of my control-- inadequacy. i wasn't enough, love wasn't enough, the bond wasn't enough, the time spent together wasn't enough, the time spent apart wasn't enough. maybe what was shared was indeed real, but it wasn't the kind that sticks. 

i have no choice to shoulder these revelations alone. i can't confirm my suspicions or be told all of it isn't true and there's still plenty of love to be had between us. i can never be given any answers, because they were laid out in front of me the entire time. i was just too blind to see them.

is it even possible to stop missing someone? i kind of don't want to.