There's A Kind of Love Called Letting Go

I miss you. I don’t know why this feeling is very strong today, but I just thought I would let you know. I suppose I could just tell you myself directly, but I know you won’t hear me. What I mean is, you will hear the words, but you won’t hear all that I am not saying with those words; the things that I can’t articulate, and that don’t sound genuine no matter how I pepper them with the correct verbiage. I wrote you a poem that I immediately tore up. It was half a page of sentiments that seemed too personal. Then I sat and fantasized about what I would tell you in person, but I dismissed those thoughts with some music. In fact, as I lay there, with the thoughts swirling in my head, I forced myself to sleep, hoping that thoughts of you wouldn’t carry over into my dreams.

The thing is, you appear in my dreams unexpectedly.  Does your constant appearance have meaning? Or is it one of those times whereby you attempt to draw meaning from something, and you analyze, ponder, and discuss a matter dry, not realizing that the matter is dry; that you can’t draw water from a rock?  Evidently, traces of your shadow linger in me, tormenting me, teasing me that perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

How do I starve my sub conscience of your face? What must I do to put to death thoughts of you? What must I do to kill all traces of you so that you will no longer permeate the deepest recesses of my mind? I’m not sure what I miss about you. I don’t even know you anymore. I don’t know if I ever really did.

There was a time that I searched for you; I made a desperate attempt to retrace my steps, to find you and restore things back to their “proper” place. I held on to you until I was skin and bone, my desire for you decaying my body from the inside out. I had to let go. I cried a lot, you know. I felt numb for the longest time. Some days I could not even sleep. Most days I felt as though I’d been holding my breath under an ocean, and had to fight through the panic of not being able to reach the surface in time to gasp for breath.  When I broke the surface, that breath of air was sweet, and glorious; I cherished it as long as I could. I couldn’t enjoy it for long because just when I thought I was free, thoughts of you dragged me back to the bottom of the deep. It took a while to breathe normally again, to convince my brain that I wasn’t running out of air when it recycled images of you.

I wish I had discovered that part of you that I tell myself exists.  I don’t know for what though. These days I tell myself that you don’t really exist, that it’s my mind constructing a shadow of something that was never there to begin with. You know how sometimes you remember something but not the details, so because of your emotions, feelings, desires, etc. you end up filling in the blanks of an experience that doesn’t belong to you? That’s what I am doing. I am missing something that never existed.

I must release you somehow. Funny enough, despite you haunting my dreams, I don’t want you. I shudder when I think about how desperately I wanted you. I fashioned you from wood, dipped you in yellow paint and thought you a god. But, none of this matters. You are a phantom that I must release. The “you” I thought I knew doesn’t exist. I have to release you and trust that it is all for the best.  I miss you, though. Today especially, I miss you lots.