You are gone. You left in a flurry of angry words, incomprehensible actions and misunderstood gestures. And when you left, you announced that you had no more words for me, and worse still, no desire to find the words.
You left. You left because I left and could not return as the same person you once knew. Because you could not believe that despite everything I even wanted to return. We left each other at the precise moment that we each wanted to return. To right our wrongs. To find the comfort we once knew. To laugh like we used to.
And you are gone. Gone and lost to me now as surely as you once felt me gone and lost. Your parting gifts were first anger and animosity, and then finally a terrible silence. And through this silence I've stumbled with my rage, my fear, my complete and endless sadness. And it was here, in the middle of a new world of infinite possibilities and an old one of unanswered questions, that I found the true depth of my commitment to you.
You are gone and I am still somehow living with you. As our lives move on in different directions, with different partners, different goals, different dreams, a core part of me remains committed to you, to the notion of you and your place in my life, to the life I was supposed to be living.
How? I ask. How are you so definitely severed from me and I continue to live as if you are not gone, as if my future includes you still, despite all evidence in both our lives to the contrary?
I cannot let go of the part of me that refuses to let you go, the part that knows that you are as wholeheartedly mine as I am yours. Amidst the pain, the anger, the mistakes, the stupidity. It is here that my love resides, growing in strength, in understanding, in fearlessness. Amidst it all we remain, settled in this place so close to my core that it must be my soul. There is no other place for you now but in my soul.
It is in your absence that I have learned to be committed. And it is this commitment that will help me survive your absence.
