Unraveling

I hesitate to let this out yet, to make public something so personal to me. I know the questions will come though, and I don't have the mindset right now to deal with them directly. Instead I'll spill the pieces of my heartbreak into the vast regions of cyberspace, in the hope that my words will filter into smaller bytes, reduced to the smallest electrical current that a fly wouldn't feel, much less my heart.

Last week L and I made a decision. He'd probably say that I made it and, in the interest of self preservation, I suppose I did. We are going our separate ways. I won't speak for him or disclose information he may consider private and, as much as I want to blame him so that I have someone to be angry with, I can't. It just turns out to be an impossible situation. What I want isn't what he needs so it's time to let go. It just hurts. A lot.

There are those few peaceful seconds between sleeping and waking before I feel the clutch of my heart and lose my breath and realize nothing will be the same again. My stomach remains knotted throughout the day. I want to cry until there's nothing left, as if the tears could wash away any and all memory. Alternately, I'd like to be drunk every day, blissfully, numbingly intoxicated, until one day I wake up to a different life. I have the luxury of neither.

My mind is filled with eight years of happy memories, all of the things I will miss. Sure there were bad times, quite a few and some of them were just Ugly. I choose not to define our relationship that way, knowing there is a reason we lasted eight years. I won't miss those bad times, but I will miss our trips out of town, bread and cheese and wine nights, playing cards, holidays and being with someone who can always make me laugh and always knows when to hold me. I will miss being a family, the one thing I value most in life. The loss is overwhelming, no wonder I can't breathe.

I know I will be alright. I hear my mom's voice in my head over and over - "Everything happens for a reason." Throw in any other tired old cliche here you'd like. They're cliche because they're true. My heart just isn't listening right now.