Desperation

It was all I could do to stop from calling. Yesterday I felt like desperation was the word of the day. My heart screamed to hear that voice on the other side of the phone. It lay beside me and I stared at it as both a savior and an enemy. If I called...what would happen? Would he pick up? Would he let it ring into the open? Would I get the response I wanted or would my actions crush me yet further?

I remember the night I confessed. I broke down in rivers of tears as I gave him my heart, bruised and damaged as it was. But I gave it. Fear had taken over my throat, gripping it in a vice as the sobs escaped into the night. And he held me, giving me hope that I had not given in vain.

As time passes and I see the world continues to function, I break down a little more each day. They say time heals all wounds, but time has worked against me here.

I used to cling to my pride, a precious untouchable thing. As I felt love encompass me, I let pride go and followed my heart. The things I have done, the words I've uttered, the looks I have given and the tears I have shed were devoid of that pride. Many a person has mistaken me for a cold-hearted woman, removed from the feeling that being alive entails. It is not as it seems. Those that take the time and look beyond the surface can see that pulsing organ beat as warmly and as truly as their own.

Desperation is devoid of pride. Instead you are on autopilot, driven by a force beyond your thoughts. And I am weaker now than I feel I've ever been and all I can hope for is an end to it all. If I disappeared, I would be running away. And I have never run.

Today, it seems like such a sweet path. Run from the memories, the sights, the smells...

I remember watching the movie "Someone Like You". The main character went through a bad breakup, her heart shattered, and she went to a doctor and asked for her sense of smell to be removed. A strange request, granted, but she wanted to erase the memories associated with the smells of her former lover. I would, if I could, have my memories removed. Start over, forget the desperation, the wonder, the agony.

How do you rebuild a shattered world? Work is done on automatic though there are moments and there are students who manage to bring out in me real smiles from time to time; taekwondo forces me to concentrate on my muscles, the discipline it entails, but beyond that is a chasm of darkness that begins as soon as the alarm clock sounds and ends as my exhausted body finally, finally drifts off to sleep.

As I lay in bed last night, pain radiated throughout my body. I could feel the bruises with each movement on the cold sheets. I had been through a war with myself and I managed to keep my hands from that phone. There are many moments when I want to destroy that silent communicator, throw away my computer and crawl into a dark space and sleep the memories away.

This is what people seek in heroine, cocaine, opium...The oblivion of escape. The core of me cannot accept that form of escape, but I understand.

You would think, as you got older, that breakups would get easier. You've felt the pain before, should it be a surprise each and every time? Do we not subconsciously prepare for such eventualities? Have we not bounced back from those times to emerge stronger?

But as I age, it just gets to be torture. A wheel of torture being cranked every day, tighter, tighter and yet tighter as the days progress. Time moves at a snail's pace and every inch of your mind and body is stretched to its limits until days, hours, minutes and seconds pass in infinitesimal increments and all becomes a blur.

Alfred Lord Tennyson once wrote:

I hold it true, whate'er befall;

I feel it, when I sorrow most;

'Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all.

I always believed that. What sadness to have lived a life without love? Can I still swallow that thought without choking on it? I fight with myself daily to keep from feeling regret. It's always been a waste of time to regret, hasn't it? I struggle to keep anger at bay. One of my male friends told me that it was healthy to feel anger and that I should embrace it, but I cannot. I will not. If I do feel it, it is for myself and myself alone. Anger for being so desperate, for relinquishing control when the odds were stacked against me, for not being able to let go, for being weak, for loving him alone, for sitting here and writing about a man I will probably never see, hear from or know again.

Desperation pushes me to write this, in the hopes that I will feel better, if but for a brief moment. In the meantime, I am on that wheel, and I am cranking it by myself, my own torturer, my face set with resignation and my heart, still in my breast, shredded to pieces.