I can’t believe she left me.
I don’t have a right to expect her to always be here but i wasn’t ready for this.
She was outwardly so confident she wouldn’t leave, but I knew she was scared. We were all scared. Some of us still are.
I am.
This is not about her of course, not really. She faced the hand fate dealt her with such amazing grace and determination I was in awe. I was so proud of her, whether I have any right to be or not. She was a model cancer patient if ever there was one and certainly didn’t deserve what happened. I miss her so much.
So who needs forgiveness if not the one who “left”?
In reality I’m not really sure. I know I’m angry; not an uncommon emotion I’m sure but I feel incredibly selfish for feeling it. I find it curious that my first thought when writing this piece was “I can’t believe she left me.”
It’s not like she chose to. We drifted apart during those final months and I think I understand why. I’m fairly certain that the core of my issue is that so much of my life revolved around her, and it feels like a part of me has been ripped away leaving a jagged wound. Nearly four years later as I write this I still feel broken, which is especially tough to accept since she largely helped me fix myself ten years ago.
I was a broken automaton back then, blindly following my programming, never veering, never taking chances, never crawling out of my shell to experience the world around me. She showed me another way, and now it’s gone.
But is it really? Can I recreate it? Can I find that person I was for the first six of the past ten years and resurrect him?
I don’t know, but I know I want to. Probably an evolution of him rather than a simple rebirth, but I don’t know how.
What I do know is that it has to start with me forgiving myself for letting go of him in the first place. Whether I blame the grief, the pain, my not being equipped to deal with a loss so fundamental to my character at the time, it has to be forgiven for me to move on with any sense of purpose.
She’d tell me to just get on with it, and she’d be right. She’d say all the right things to help me do it too, probably without even trying. She’d be equal parts annoyed and amused at my inability to just do it.
She’d be exactly what I need to just get past this and get on with being. The irony is certainly not lost to me.
She is.