Scabs

Of all the days to pick at scabs, I picked today as the world neared the turn of another year. History has a way of repeating itself, patterns recurring, motifs reappearing, and to look back at the last five years now should be to gleam some lessons from it, to evaluate the life lived and see where I may have fallen short. The wounds may have still been fresh beneath the scabs. After all, how does one heal from the hurt of five years gone to waste without short of a miracle? I have often heard it said that it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, but as I heard it then and as I thought of it now, I couldn't help but notice how masochistic that false aphorism meant. To think that the greatest tragedy of my life was to have been left behind, not a flood or a sickness, neither ravaged by fire nor threatened by death. How could people live after tragedies I wondered, where did they get the strength to live? And then the question, where would I?

I realized that after the breakup I had lived through the days numbly, mistaking absolute denial for strength. That night when Alex picked up the rest of his things, I had many questions I wanted to ask him. Why did he let us go on for so long when he didn't believe we had a future? Why waste all that time and energy, why expend such effort for something he thought worthless? All these years was he trying to figure out whether our relationship was worth something or not, and was the break up the result of finally figuring it out and deeming it wanting? And the words that he picked to end things, how cutting they were, how penetrating: I don't see you in my future, like a seer that announced the definite ending of days. Would it have been easier to take if there had been someone else? Was it easier to rival someone else rather than myself? 

It wasn't as if it had all happened suddenly. Signs had been there all along: his refusal to talk about the future, of jointly buying a house, of sharing the cost of furniture, of the longing his eyes took as he saw a family with their children. But these were signs I refused to see for what they were because we were happy, or as near to happiness as two people who couldn't get married could ever hope to be. I believed we could weather through everything he found lacking in our relationship. After all, hadn't I been introduced to his parents, didn't that mean something? I was half hoping that his parents or his sisters would intervene for a reconciliation, but none of the sort happened, and until this day none of them had given word. They would have all known already after moving back in with his parents. We've had arguments but nothing went as far as a move out before. 

We always give up a part of ourselves when we fall in love. We trade privacy for companionship, trade solitude for support, and we begin to care about the well being of someone else beside ourselves. For couples who live together, we divide the chores between us and even learn to love some of them that the other hates. So when couples separate, an emptiness echoes in our houses, an absence of warmth and love, a vacuum that sucks out the last remnants of happiness that may still lurk in crevices. Nothing could ever prepare us from such separation, of realizing that the worst betrayal was from someone we absolutely trust and are willing to give our lives to. I felt so hurt that the thought of becoming friends with Alex eventually seemed impossible. I could only think of him now as a stranger, because if I thought he still loved and cared for me then why did he hurt me so? 

What to learn then from this ordeal? There might be a lesson here somewhere, but maybe it was too soon to see it yet. I sure wasn't going to stop falling in love again to prevent myself from being hurt again. That was the risk that came with love, and I wasn't so jaded as to believe that all gay men were pigs and were only put here on this earth to cause me pain. I would still believe in the redeeming power of love, of its ability to free us to become our best selves, of giving us meaning to live the best kind of life we can live. 

As the year turned to a close and how this particular one had upturned my life like I've never experienced before, I was keeping my optimism up that the next year was going to bring me something better, or if not better at least something different. I was sure that a new love was just around the corner, bidding its time, waiting for me to learn from this current heartache, waiting for me to heal, and when I'm ready it will surprise me with its presence, and love will blossom in the space between our hearts.