Moving on, I’m not …
… done with the lessons and unlearning survival tactics.
I’m not high enough, and I’ve barely ever been able to tell you the truth while I’m sober. I’m sorry I didn’t let you know sooner that I was a coward. I didn’t know, either. I really deluded myself into thinking I was helping us.
I place them at every corner of the yoga mat before a session, the candles. Perhaps it’s the heat, or the light; sitting in that centre feels very familiar. Very warm. Breathing in that centre feels very … real.
Today’s session is over.
I lay on my back, turning to the closest candle. It’s right in front of my face, in fact. It flickers and licks nearer, as if sensing my presence. As if it wants to observe me, like I, it — and that one little act is all it knows how to do.
A flame’s very essence is a whole lot of life and a whole lot of heat, both of which I don’t do very well with — but you’re beautiful so I told myself I’d brave it. A flame is energy living and dying over and over again, and there it is, wanting to observe me. I couldn’t let it, though, no matter how much I liked its presence. No matter how much I wanted it to.
You were my little flame. You still are. Never has anything come into my life and ravaged it so. I don’t think a flame can stop being a flame; not even after it’s died out — not to the thing that’s been burned, anyway.
Everywhere I turn, there’s a sign telling me to move on because, for once (and for real, this time, unlike my four previous attempts), I need to stop using you to punish myself. I know you didn’t take over my life. I just put you in everything, like here, like now.
I was too afraid to love me for fear of not loving you. All my life, I thought love was sacrifice. (Now, I’m suddenly listening to a lot of Selena Gomez.)
Lose You To Love Me — song by Selena Gomez | Spotify — open.spotify.com
Listen to Lose You To Love Me on Spotify. Selena Gomez · Song · 2020.
Now that I have lost you, I’m at a point where I am, once again, too afraid to love me for fear of not loving you. I’m thinking, now that I know how much of the problem I am — I was: what if I can still try? What if this can change? What if I can change?
It’s always so many IFs for me when I want you. Loving is knowing only the person, never the situation. My liquid friend reminded me of that.
I liked knowing you; that, I’m sure of. It was like knowing god. From your radiant skin to insides that poured like sweet-smelling oil whenever you were turned on. Would you believe me if I said I was talking about your soul?
How dare anyone ask me to let that go?
This is the first time I’ve opened up to you in a while, even before I started the journey of letting us go.
And I realised I never said I’m sorry for every time I got angry instead of worried that you were upset and I didn’t know what to do. I’m very ashamed that I failed to let myself see you.
I forgive me. I hope you do.
