People I love that are no longer a part of my intimate life that are estranged from me, carry on as ghosts in my memory, haunting me in my dreams. From a distance I see them and last night during sleep, one of them trained his eyes on me, watching me with fleeting? interest as I passed him by. I was utterly alone, stripped of comfort, just as I was when we were one, or meant to be one...
I cannot track or trace people I still love without being a voyeur. Once upon a time I had back stage access to the lives of friends, of a spouse, of relatives, but I no longer possess the lanyard that lets the guardians of the gates know that I have special entrance privileges, that I get to see and hear all, because I have been invited in. Once upon a time, the lanyard was invisible and we connected almost seamlessly... once upon a time.
Now I am bereft, without solace, without capability to be comforted. Grief is like that: it lets a person down, down, down, dropping them into despair in the knowing that restoration and repair is beyond reach. Some people are irretrievable, aren't they dear reader, even when they seem phantom close. How does one forget the laughter, the tears, the shared sentiments of adoration and together-foreverness-promises in moments of closeness, that seem mockable as a faded remembrance, too surreal to believe it ever existed, as time and space fill in the gap of being parted.
To not live the I-remember-when's with someone you love is a sad state, isn't it? I have books, journals, cards, signed, "With love, forever", and yet these, and the other mementos, hold empty promises that died on the vine. Perhaps my former others hold on to little remembrances from me, and they see them as cast offs, things to be held for a short time, and discarded too, as unfulfilled nothingness.
I asked God to remove the dreams from me. I don't want them... I don't want facsimiles of humans, people that are and aren't at the very same time. I cannot touch a ghost, or the memory of someone I used to be able to hug or kiss, hold hands with: it isn't good enough. The dreams leave me lonely, and the reality upon waking have me troubled and sometimes curious... thus the sick fascination in wondering how they are making out in the world.
I find myself clinging, ever so slightly, ever so gently, almost imperceptibly to the tenuous relationships I have. Are they spider web thin and unstable? Can they bear my full weight, the heavy and hardy parts of me that need holding up? Is commitment ever truly a life time event, or has that gone the way of the dodo birds, as the saying goes.
As I type, my Yorkie sleeps under my sweatshirt, and the mug my son gave me for my birthday sits close by with hot tea waiting for sipping. It says LOVE BUG on it, and that is what I aspire to, and have failed to achieve. I want to be love, and while I long for those that were in my life and are no more, I want to remember what it felt like to be in love with them, minus the trying to somehow fit them back in to my now, my dreams, my current state of living. Letting them go is all I can do, and Lord help me, that is as near to impossible as it gets, because people are not throw away things, here today and discarded tomorrow.
Today I grieve the losses once more. March is the end and the beginning in more ways than I can count, and the season of change is tangible, quietly holding tentative hope with the expectation of... newness?
Tomorrow man manipulates the clock, presumably to save us daylight time. As we spring forward I pray my memories fall back into a place of merciful relief of remembering, minus the loneliness of unfulfilled longing.
For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning (Psalm 30:5)
I pray joy in the springtime morning, for you, for me, and for those we lost or misplaced along the way...
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