My Heart Won’t Let You Go

It’s so difficult to stay away from you when you’re just around the corner. I run, drive, or bike past your house nearly every day. I know when you are home without even making the effort to find out, and I hate that. I already miss you so desperately that the temptation to simply walk up and knock on your door is something that I fight constantly.

Maybe I could put you out of my head more easily if you were already gone. Somewhere I don’t know, can’t picture, moving on with your life in a way that is foreign to me. If I didn’t have to dread running into you accidentally at practically any moment, putting on a brave face and pretending that seeing you doesn’t break my heart. I don’t know whether I want to hold you or punch you right now, and I shouldn’t do either, so I set my jaw stubbornly and stay away.

It’s ridiculously difficult to stay out of my head, to dismiss memories of our happy past when everywhere I go has some vestige of you attached. Maybe I need to leave too, get out of this small town that I’ve only ever really known as part of the pair that once included you. Maybe I need to reimagine it for myself, on my own, but that feels almost impossible at the moment. This is the first heartbreak I’ve experienced without the support of a network of friends to lift me up. Sometimes it’s as if I’m sinking into a chasm of loneliness that I’ve dug on my own like all I’ve done in my life is fall into one misstep after another.

The problem is that I can’t run away from myself, no matter how hard I try. I’ve been in this headspace before and pushing it aside didn’t fix anything. I’ve worked on healing myself from the inside out before, but I didn’t dig deep enough. I’m beginning to understand that my pain is something that will never go away on its own, or find a cure in the love of another. It has to be dealt with every single day in real-time, with care and tenderness towards all the wounded parts of me. It is the reason that I keep choosing partners who cannot give me the love that I crave. To be fair, no one can because I have to fill that void for myself, somehow, some way.

Some stupid part of me, deep inside, hopes you come back even though I know you won’t. I am well aware that our relationship had issues brought on by the baggage that both of us have not addressed. I don’t know that you will ever care enough to face and transform yours, and that’s not my problem any longer. As much as I wish you would, it doesn’t matter. You’re not mine anymore and I don’t know if I would even pick you again if I was a healthy, emotionally whole individual.

All that I want from the universe right now is to laugh in your arms again, but I understand that’s the one thing that’ll keep ruining me, so I fight my own deeply ingrained, dysfunctional instincts and I stay away. And yet, still, in spite of myself, I wish that you would come get me and make it all okay.