I count the months like highway mile markers. Summer turned to fall gives way to winter. Six months passed, soon seven. My children seem impossibly older. Sometimes, so do I.
Healing is a slow traveler. And yet, by imperceptible degrees, there is change. What was too painful to touch, then too numb to feel, finds at last expression in deep and tender grief.
The short of it is that I fell in love. And for a time, so did she. And then, quite suddenly, she was gone, both as lover and friend. And the world seemed poisoned to me.
Our love had been a reckless thing. Alive, spontaneous, heedless. Memories flood me. Playful, shy, curious, tender. It’s the smallest things that seem to hurt the most.
Perhaps if I’d known the cost, I’d have been more guarded. Perhaps if I’d been wiser, less anxious, if I’d needed her less, she would have stayed. Perhaps this is how it had to be.
Our meeting was sunlight on a seed held dormant through a long winter. It sprouted quickly, its roots reaching inwards to touch the the center. Opening doors within my mind I didn’t know existed.
There are wounds that do not ever fully heal. And these deepen us. They show us the world as it is. Between lovers, a wound is wounding to the core just as healing is healing of the heart.
When again I open to love, I will have come to heal. To trace the scars of old attachments and there to ignite new love. Your fear will be my guide, my pain will be your compass. Compassion will be our instrument. And, I hope, wholeness will be our reward.