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Loving, as a verb, is the covert act of courting pain. You dance with it. Play hide-and-seek. Challenge it to a duel. Get off on the thrill of cheating it. Revel in defeating it. But, ultimately, succumb.
I sit reverently in the throes of heartache. Marinating in the melancholy of having tried and failed and tried and failed…again. Destabilized by untethering.
It’s the loss of the imagined future. It’s the “what ifs” and “maybe if we had just..”s.
Grief.
A redistribution of emotional energy. I allowed my lover to help carry my burdens. I’m reclaiming responsibility for their weight…and they are heavier than I remember.
It’s un-habiting habits. Taking down the beautiful structures we built together, brick by brick, each stone a memory. Re-viewing the moments and knowing that there were so many “last time we…” that I was blissfully unaware of and now have to resign to the past because the door to the future has closed.
I could smash them to pieces in protest, or endure the exquisite ache of reliving every moment of attachment, just to submerge myself in their beauty one last time. I choose to treat those memories as gifts. A rose-colored sanctuary I will revisit in my mind. The admission fee will be a few silent tears, as often the act of loving him in real time had required.
It’s gut-wrenchingly beautiful, heartbreakingly precious, as loss tends to be. It’s an analog to our very existence. Birth. Life. Death.
It’s Love.
And it’s pain.
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Originally Published on P.S. I Love You
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Photo Credit: Getty Images