I am in a womb of pain. I am surrounded, engulfed by a muffled world where I am alone and in the dark. It is truly breathtaking, squeezing each breath out of me with a python’s inexorable strength. I know one cannot die of such pain, but that is what I feel inside: death. It is a familiar feeling I did not at one time expect to feel this particular year. 2009 was going to be my year, but with the blindingly bright exception of a handful of weeks, it has been a year of nothing but the worst torment. I feel as though sooner or later, I will implode, crushed finally by the endless pressure in my chest.
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My heart has not broken. No, that is far too neat and simple. I have been shattered, a hole blown out of my chest by an atom bomb concentrated in the shrinking hollow of my ribcage. I am blown apart. I am limbs flung away, scattered in the ashes.
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I never knew – I never knew that emotional agony could have an actual physical pain. It literally feels as if my chest has a jagged hole, as if I am dying from the inside out. In all my other seasons of pain, there was never a physical correlation. But now . . . I know it. I have knowledge from the tree of life. And I do not know how I shall recover.
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How do you survive the memories? That is where the pain comes from, this awesome, bottomless maw yawning below me. It’s the memories of how it was for so brief a time.
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And such anger! Like Tourette’s, it bursts from my lips when I am alone and doing random tasks. The curses I bite back so I will acquit myself well and not make myself a liar. But the anger only lasted for a few days and now I am merely flotsam carried on the tide of this agony, this torture. I have indeed grown up, indeed been made tougher. I do not complain, I do not talk of it. I simply curl inwards and am struck silent at the awesome implacability of this pain. And it will go on. I do not see an end to it in sight.
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I am in pieces. I cannot feel God, although my faith has also been made tougher and I still know the truth. But nothing shields me from this pain, not even God.
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Why should he not come back? Surely he cannot but feel conviction at the ways he failed me in his own weakness and fear, even if I was a rebound. There were just so many ways we matched, so many astounding small miracles that seemed like the flagstones of confirmation upon which to stand. But did none of it mean anything to him? Did he remember none of it, that he should so blithely go off with this woman whose name I will not speak but which rattles in my brain? How could she not pale in comparison to me, especially now that he knows everything, including what I could not say, in that perfect letter? How could he not have responded to such a letter? Did it not reach him? God would not have done so. Not only did I deserve for him to know the full extent of his choice, but he deserved it, too. He deserved to know the truth, the beauty and the pain of full disclosure, complete revelation, for the good it will always do him. But who has received such a letter? And who could repay such love as one does not find in this world with silence? Was I wrong about him? And will he truly never come back? Will I truly never see him again? Such a thing overtaxes my mental faculties. I cannot think of it because it is such an ignominious end to it all. Truly? All of this woman, all of this refined love, wasted? For all the good knowing him did me, I still cannot think there wasn’t flagrant wastefulness that I never even got a real try, that all of that love, rarer than snow in Egypt in its quality, should be shut out by a locked door. What is God playing at? This shakes so many life-long-held beliefs I had about life. I had always held to a certain innate justice to life, that you got out what you put in, but I do not believe this is justice, for all the improvements and newly-minted strength I find in myself. For this to be the end, the true end? For that letter merely to have been my last-ditch attempt at closure, and nothing more? For nothing to have come of it all? The idea staggers me. Or it would if I wasn’t already on my knees.
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I am so tired all the time. No matter how much sleep I get, no matter how well I eat or how many vitamins I take, I am still exhausted. I am tired physically, tired emotionally, tired mentally, tired spiritually. I do not hunger and I do not eat. But I paint my face expertly to hide the shadows, and dress smartly, and speak softly and patiently, and smile gently, and open my hands to help where I’m needed. I am able to shut my mouth against complaint and ask for wisdom instead. How ironic that he made me strong enough to bear the loss of him. That was his whole purpose and mine in knowing him. Someday the irony of life will kill me.
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But what am I to do as I’m stretched on the rack? Nowhere to go from the pain? That which I so feared back in June is, indeed, as bad as I feared. One of the few times in life, actually, when the reality outperforms the anticipation of it. I never envisioned, even then, just how cutting the pain would be, just how messy my wounds. Funny that reality surpasses anticipation mainly in the bad things.
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God, 2009 sucked. Worst year of my life, the school year of 2008-2009. And I thought it would be over when I met him, but here I am, 6 months and counting from those glorious, revoltingly brief days and all those months were just to teach me a lesson? What? That I’m destined always to be disappointed in love, one way or another?
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And he truly can forget me?
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