I will carry you with me

Preface

I wrote this about my childhood first love. The relationship I had with them was complex and fueled by trauma from both within and without. When I wrote this, I genuinely believed that the emotions expressed were endemic of real love. I realize now that this is not the case. Instead, I see that I was describing a trauma bond - one that had worked its way deep into my being for nearly a decade, pervading every aspect of my identity, so much that it was my identity. It's taken me years to get to the point of realizing that, and it will take longer still to remove all of the roots. I post this now to remind myself of where I came from and to keep myself from going back.

I sit alone in my room, paralyzed by a pain that feels worse than death. The lights are turned off. It is overcast. The shadows of trees play on the walls as the sun sometimes shines through a break in the clouds. Almost a month has passed since everything fell apart. Since our time together was so cruelly cut short. The best time of my life now nothing more than a memory. A dream of long ago to be soon forgotten by all except me. 

You were the only one that had ever really loved me. I’m convinced you’re the only one that ever will. Like an artist rips out a failed piece from his sketchbook so you were torn away from me. Our love was crumpled up and cast aside, a worthless piece of paper to collect dust under a desk. To slowly rot away as the ever-marching pace of time devours it.

Maybe we were just kids making promises that we could never keep. Planning a life together that we would never have. Our every word sharpening a knife that would cut so so deep. I knew it then and God do I know it now: I will never love anyone as I do you. I will try, but with each attempt I will only widen the void in my heart that only you can fill. 

So I will miss you. Every day. And every hour. I will see you in every love story and hear you in every love song. Unable to accept the horrifying reality that you are gone forever. 

One day I will leave this room, this house, and this town… But I won’t leave you. For the rest of my life I will carry you with me. I told you as much before the end. That I would “always love you, no matter what”. That promise that would make the deepest cut of all. I will always carry you with me and when I return I will look for you. I will search for you in grocery store, at every football game, every church service, and every car I see on the roads crisscrossing the place I once called home. The town will change. One day all of the places that hold our ghosts will be torn down and replaced. But my love for you will still be there.

Sometimes I will find you in these places, visiting for the holidays or at home for the summer. Most of the time however, I won’t. I don’t know which will hurt more. Even when I look for you in places I know I won’t find you, I will still feel the same pain. Every time I do find you it won’t matter. My fear will rule me as it always has. I won’t speak to you. I won’t reach out. I won’t confess to you. I will just watch from afar as you move on and I don’t, longing for a chance that I will never pursue. 

Now I’m sobbing again. The tears crest my lips. Slide down my arms. Fall from my fingertips.