Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens. ~J.R.R. Tolkien
It happened today, in a small burst in my chest, after so much darkness. But even in the darkness, I must've known there was a shard of light. I must've had hope of hope in order to find it.
Sometimes, the darkness felt like a deep, wide ocean that threatened to swallow me whole, to take me under, and I can say, if I'm holding onto something lighter than that darkness--a piece of wood afloat in the waters--I'm still not safely ashore. However, now I know where to find the map.
I read a story today about a woman who has gone through what I've gone through, the chronic romantic disappointments, the ensuing dangerous depressions, and she came out to a new life. I have every intention of following her there, even if there's much to shed in the process.
One cannot have a new life without giving up so many old ideas--I've been sewn together by my ideas of romance--passed down over generations, perhaps. Or I watched and believed the movies. My pursuit of love has consumed me, has destroyed me, in ways I won't go into here, but may later. However, it's not an exaggeration to say that my ideas of love have taken me to the gates of insanity and death. In my early twenties, I thought it romantic when a young man asked me, after we'd spent a week of entanglement, "would you die for me?"
I am giving up all my old ideas of romance and love. I am willing to admit I know nothing about real romantic love. I've had whole relationships that happened only in my imagination, some in which the most important turns in the relationship happened only through text messages, and some, that happened all too much in actuality, but the aftermath of which uncovered deeper and deeper layers of trauma until this last when I'm nearly cowering in a corner, a small child hiding from the angry parent.
I offer all of this up to the sky above me, as I hold on tightly to the light piece of wood that floats in the sea I've been nearly drowning in.
Faith is the bird that sings when the dawn is still dark. ~Rabindranath Tagore
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