Sides of the Coin

The End

The breeze; a whiff; a scent

Winds its way around your daydream.

Snapshots, illusions,

Of remembered past

Imagined future -- lost.

Your soft stolen sleep-shirt

Suppler now, upon return

Embedded with her skin

Handled with care

Fear at crushing

Fibers of memory and hope.

But so carefully,

Neglecting foundation.

And so, ash disintegrated

Into the wind.

Apple shampoo

Clings to the collar

Crushed shirt slipping like sand

Through cupped hands

You could have known scent and

How perfume faded

In the crook of her neck

Lingering warm for days

Could have seen color

Chip off, know the

Unwilling nail nibbling.

Could know that midnight conversation

Overcomes her need for sleep

Inhale, face buried in fabric memories

Haze, aroma is all that you’ve abandoned.

You gave it up, regretfully rejected

You will never know.

You’ve left the mysteries

For someone else to uncover.

All you have

Is your t-shirt--no longer,

Woven with memory,

And lost possibility.

********************************************************************

let it go - the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise - let it go it
was sworn to
go

let them go - the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers - you must let them go they
were born
to go

let all go - the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things - let all go
dear

so comes love

~ e. e. cummings ~

The Forgotten

Breakups suck.

Seriously.

Having only been on the heartbreaker's side of things before, I whimsically wondered about the songs, the poems, the vast amounts of sheer...emotion that seemed to generate from this phenomenon of getting your heart smashed to smithereens.

That situation was kindly remedied, and I have achieved the enlightenment (in a manner of speaking) of the dumped.

More importantly, and more relevant to this post, are the various reactions relating to men that occurred afterwards. After posing the ever-ambiguous "Am I ready to start dating again?" question in various forms, reactions varied from, "Yes! Jump right back in and find someone who deserves you!" (my mother) to, "Are you crazy?" (just about everyone else). Unfortunately, there is no rubric for getting over the boy you thought, however briefly and incorrectly, that you were going to marry.

And yet, that question lingers, the proverbial carrot dangling from a stick, the ambiguous goal I seem to be working towards by not really doing much of anything except wondering about it constantly.

When will I be ready to start the search anew? And how will I know when I'm ready? And why, oh why, does it seem to occupy so much of my, and everyone else's, thoughts? (Ironically, these questions can be applied to finding the person himself. How will I know it's him? Will I be ready when I find him? **rolls eyes**). Why the obsession with knowing when I can jump back in?

I think it stems from this: we are afraid of being forgotten.

We are trained so long and so hard to view the dating scene as a girl-eat-girl sharkfest, that even while we're still pulling together the scattered pieces of our disoriented emotions, there's a teeny, niggling voice that whispers, "Get yourself out there, get seen, get heard from, or the world will forget about you. And you'll be alone forever."

I think there's a lot of craziness in the dating world. A lot of misconceptions that are damaging, and a lot of attitudes that are harmful. But I really think this is one of the worst.

The fact that we have trained ourselves to be so paranoid means that we lose bits of ourselves in the effort to shake off the pain of ending a relationship so we can start a new one. Emotional health, healing, all become secondary to being visible and "kept in mind." And, in the long run, makes for far less satisfying emotional relationships. How can you recognize the rightness in someone else if you haven't taken the time to cultivate it in yourself first?

I don't know how much time anyone needs to heal. It's a personal thing, and very hard either way. But I kind of resent the fact that I don't feel the freedom to do what it takes to make myself OK because of the cultivated idea that all the "good ones" will get snapped up while I'm not looking.

Fine then. Maybe I'll be forgotten.

But at least I'll be whole.

And you know what? That might be enough for now.