Lighthouse - Two

Oh, how the mighty weight pins my chest and leaves me breathless…

Just a few months ago, I was in awe at how oblivious I had been to the shallowness in my lungs, having heaved half-breaths my whole life. Perhaps it is part of always being ready … vigilance, some call it. Be on the ball of your feet. Never let your hands settle. Bounce those legs, just in case you need to spring up and defend yourself.

I don’t sit with my back towards unlocked doors, and am in a perpetual state of scanning my environment. Cataloguing the people, the place, the spaces, the exits, and any way I may need to get me and mine to safety. Some tragic part of me enjoyed it. Or, conceivably, I found a ridiculous pride in it; surviving this long despite a long list of scars from blades or bullets. That pride is relatively reserved for myself, however, because it is not something I choose to discuss or disclose to many people.

In fact, I have a certified hang-up about these two separate lives. The one that made me fearful and comforted by chaos, and the one where I listen and bring calm to the forefront. See, I hesitate to share much of those stories because I want who I have become to stand for who I am, and anyone who takes my history and amplifies their love of the tools I have developed since feels like the sour sister of pity.

Even though this is fundamentally untrue. Thanks, therapy!

All of this put me in a pretty precarious situation when thrust into the space where the lighthouse glow struck the Earth. I felt seen, and understood, and heard, and regardless of how many compromising positions I found myself in during a past life, this was the softest and most vulnerable I have ever felt. I could die in a heartbeat.

And maybe I would.

Over the years – especially these last few – I have opened up parts inside of me in ways that let me experience my own perspective differently. Rapidly, I have become more in tune with my intuition and the pull of unknowing things. Take that inner voice, and add it to my lifetime of cultivating the skills (good or bad) to read people, and I feel more aware and able than ever. This sensation grows with every bit of experience I gain, and as it is a quintessential part of the person I want to be, it therefore fuels some pride in who I am.

The worst part? I thought she saw it too.

There’s a not-so-funny hilarity in the idea that I was pushing along on a track in my life, not terribly happy, but content in ways that I hadn’t been in years. I had no want to be involved with anyone, and had no desire (no audible desire anyway) to be seen. That voice that screams from my heart to be loved and build love and give love had been tempered and hushed out of necessity. There I was just minding my own business, keeping my head down, and my entire world changed.

Regardless of whether I was aware of it or not, the universe decided it was finally time for me to go home. To meet my home. To find salvation against the survival. To find a spotlight to shine in all the crevices of my story. And it was … everything.

And now? I am awash in either crippling heartache or petrifying anger. Like two oceans of opposite emotions, I am either drowning one of the two or being thrown around assunder where they meet and crash and bruise me.

The questions I ask myself and the room and the moon and the universe are always the same, but there are no answers to be had.

How can I be shown such a meaningful and obviously fitting place to be and then lose it?

How does someone who says I am their favorite person choose a path without me?

How can our shared experience and understanding lead to such painful results?

How can someone who sees me so clearly lose their grip on who I am?

Now, I am nothing to them.

The place I found footing, fell out from under my soles, and I am adrift in the open water again. So far out this time – with pride and confidence shaken so violently some of the bolts have loosened or fallen – that I cannot tell if it is the ocean or the sky I float in. It is black, and there is coldness everywhere. I can see the stars and feel the pull of the moon, but I do not know which way is up any longer.

Somehow, knowing that this comfort and that sensation of being settled exists, and living without it is far more torturous than my previous belief that I was not one to ever experience relief. I thought I’d never find it, and in my weakest moments, I wish I could go back to that reality.

And it haunts me every moment of every day. Often, I will feel it echo in the empty space beside me. Or feel her presence in the other room. And every time I walk through that front door, a very small voice in the back of my mind wonders and prays that she will be inside. I will catch her scent on the wind and hear her voice from a distance. But I cannot grasp onto any of it. Desperately, I try to keep my hands and my mind from diving into the gigantic pool of photographs just to ease the heartbeat in my chest with the look she had in her eyes as she looked at me, photographing her.

While my fortune may have damned me to know of a person with every piece designed to bring me peace, I flounder with my life as I go back to repetitive survival mechanics designed to burn time and keep me alive. But for what?

I will build that house. Blue shutters and wrap-around porch and all, and do my damndest to convince myself that living on shallow breaths is more valuable than not living at all.

Every day that I exist unsettled, and every day a vast silence keeps me from loving her, is a waste. And I am terrified that the rest of my life will be a collection of wasted days. Everything just shy of fulfilling, knowing how much better it would be to share it.

Just this last month, I released a book. A poetry collection near and dear, filled with blood and sweat and tears. And while I am proud of the work I put into it, and the words it contains … I can’t help but imagine how much more beautiful it would feel to celebrate that accomplishment with my person.

I have to go back to sleep. For my survival.

We’re Wasting Time Now…

When my grandmother passed earlier this year, she was truly in a bad spot with her health. It had been a gradual decline over the years, and the end of that fight brought upon me a feeling of relief for the most part. I was glad that she didn’t have to push or try any longer, and the version of her that existed at the end didn’t consist of much of her anymore.

That relief dissipated when I saw her husband…

A stoic and unemotional, and monotone man, suffering from what can only be described as the most gut-wrenching and horrid of human experiences… losing the love of his life. I saw the man’s spirit breaking. I saw him lose sight of his purpose. I saw him get lost in the woods, not knowing which direction he was supposed to head now. I saw his life shatter…

It was right there in his eyes, haunted and red and teary from the future that lay ahead of him now. As someone who soaks up people's emotions, I was immediately overwhelmed by the weight of it all.

My sometimes invasive desire to make the most of my days, or my experiences, or my opportunities, stems mostly from a place of fear. The fear of death has followed me for the majority of my conscious life. Not that I am afraid to not exist anymore… but more so afraid of not accomplishing what I wish to, before I go. Given the number of near-death experiences I have had, it psychologically makes a lot of sense that I would fear wasting my time.

Seeing my grandmother’s husband filled with terror and pain … knowing that if he could, he would go back and have their paths cross sooner to gain more time with her … it broke open that flood of fear and potential regret. Knowing I would do anything and never feel like I’m going out of my way to just get 5 more minutes with her, let alone years, or decades …

I am fortunate to have discovered something that almost everyone will seek but never find. And I wouldn’t take it back for all the ease of this grief. And I can’t go back.

Knowing where my person is, how they make me feel, how I make them feel, and all of the good we could do side-by-side (for each other), paints a painfully obvious picture that any day where we are separate is a waste. Even if she cannot accept that she deserves it every single day. Even if she doesn’t think I deserve it every single day … I know it to be true.

And my calendar is filling with wasted days.

Days in which she is the first, the last, and at the forefront of every single thought I have. Days in which that voice that feels like home goes unheard. Days in which the missing parts within me that remain in her possession pound and ache like tectonic plates rumbling and shaking my concentration, eroding the foundation upon which I stand.

I am haunted by the loss of it.

The missing is enormous.

Now that it has a name…