Once Requitted, Twice Wounded

There was a time when you showed up in my life. So utterly unannounced, so utterly unknown. Mystery shrouded your being, though you shone like a white light. You tried to hide your insecurities behind armor so strong, yet I could see right through it all.

I'd get to know you, yet you'd push me away. I stopped trying, and then you'd chase me up, and ask me out to dinner at the place that just opened up. We shared, we laughed, and you questioned my political and spiritual ideals. That led to trouble, a dampener on the night.

I enjoyed your company; despite our differences, we were really quite similar. I'd already experienced the things that held you stuck and was willing to shed some light. Quickly, my psychological degree showcased your dismissive, even avoidant attachment type. Help as I may, you insisted independence was the way. I saw this held you stuck.

Yet beneath the certainty you wore so proudly, I caught glimpses of something else. A loneliness perhaps. A quiet ache. It surfaced in the pauses between our conversations and in the way your eyes lingered when you thought no one was looking. For a moment, I imagined that somewhere beneath all that armor there existed a person desperate to be known.

Life went on. I felt unneeded, unwanted by your presence. Something about you captivated me. When we spent time together, I could tell you could see into my being. You understood me deeper than any other. You were more important than a friend. I vented vulnerabilities around you. I wanted to share my life with you. I showed you who I am, I told you who I was.

And you said, find another.

You shattered me.

You cared so deeply for me. I felt desired and wanted by you, and yet you did not want me. Confusion spun me like cotton candy, but deeper and heavier like burnt caramel. Fog entered my mind, in worse ways than COVID. Try as I might to understand, to rectify, to re-establish, you stayed distracted. You stayed dismissive, and you refused me access to what was under the armor.

Tears streamed down my face; I couldn't bear to stay. I took the key and left, wondering if you'd pull me back.

You didn't.

Silence became your answer.

Time went dark, its echo captured the resounding broken beat of my heart. A sullen thump would try to escape my chest. I couldn't understand. I spoke the words of love. I encapsulated and showed the acts of love, yet I wasn't enough. Why did you let me in, I asked the open air. Time mocked me with its ever-passing hands.

The months that followed taught me a pain I had never known. Not the dramatic pain of movies, nor the loud heartbreak spoken of in songs. This was quieter. It lived in ordinary moments. In coffee shops where strangers laughed. In empty passenger seats. In the simple urge to send a message and remembering there was nowhere left to send it.

Still, life insisted on moving forward.

Networking was part of my job, part of my life. I'd see how others would fit into the picture; the world seemed small. Love surrounded me, captivating the hearts of others. They'd ask if I had someone.

Again, the wound would open.

Only the dream, I'd reply.

Only the dream would keep it safe.

Yet somewhere along the way, I realized the dream had changed. It was no longer about you returning. It was no longer about finally understanding what happened or discovering the missing piece that would make sense of it all.

The dream became healing.

The dream became learning that rejection does not diminish value. That being known and not chosen hurts, but it does not define who I am. The dream became believing that somewhere ahead, beyond the ache and beyond the questions, there remains a future with someone who knows this pain, has lived beyond it and will cherish me forever in what you couldn't bare to claim.

And perhaps that is what I carry now.

Not the loss of you.

But the freedom from you, and that was what I had in fact loved all along the way.