Not so long ago you told me that you didn’t understand me. It wasn’t the first time that you had said it but it was the first time in a long while in which I felt you letting your guard down. I read the email twice, took a deep breath and ignored it. It wasn’t because I don’t care or am uninterested, far from it. I ignored it because I love you. I ignored it because of the crap that had gone down between us. I ignored it because it was a foolish remark. Yes, it was simply ridiculous and we both know it.
I ignored it because you used both hands to push me away. I ignored it because you slammed the door in my face, closed the windows and told me to get lost. I ignored it because the man you fell in love with didn’t put up with that kind of nonsense. I ignored it because I don’t wear sweaters because someone else is cold. I ignored it because I woke up. I stopped pretending to be Rip Van Winkle. I woke up because I remember who I am, who I was and who I want to be.
Damn woman, I let you do one hell of a number on me. I gave in to the fear of losing you and got lost in it all. I got lost in the maze that we created and wandered through the haze and mist unsure and uncertain of what to do or how to get out of it. And while I wandered I managed to trip over every hidden root, hole and rock. I fell down more times than I can count and bloodied my lip so badly I don’t know if your lips would remember it.
And in between the falls and the twisted ankles I’ll be damned if I didn’t find myself battling the monsters of the dark. There in that twilight I fought them, monsters both real and imagined. Sometimes it was so dark I couldn’t make out their faces but I felt the bite of their teeth and the sting of their tail. My right shoulder bears the scars of one of those battles. Something large and powerful clamped down on it and did its best to try to tear it loose from my body. And though the pain was significant I never gave up.
I pummeled it with my left hand and screamed in rage. In fact it is fair to say that whatever it was touched something primal and deep inside of me. There were moments there where I wasn’t sure if I was turning into more of animal than a human. Truth is that when I finally tasted its blood I felt a surge of adrenalin- the sort of endorphin rush that normally would have come from working out. I suppose that you could say that it set off some sort of beserker rage because I went a little bit crazy or maybe I should say crazier.
Eventually it became clear to me that whatever fear I had once felt had been transferred over to whatever it was I was fighting. And it also became clear to me that the man I was when I first started fighting would have let the creature go- but I wasn’t that man any longer. This wasn’t about defending myself well enough to survive. No, it was about making a statement. It was about shock and awe. It was about wreaking the kind of havoc that echoed in ways that would make the others avoid me. I was tired of being hunted, now I would became the hunter.
You see, when I woke up from wherever it was that I had been I remembered things. I remembered the good and the bad. I remembered what it was that had happened and why I had been afraid. But I also remembered the look in your eyes and how you made me feel like a hero. I remembered how very much I loved being the hero, your hero. I remembered how easily you fit inside my arms and how I could carry you without ever growing tired.
But mostly I remembered the day I realized that I loved you and how happy I was to know that you loved me. And I remembered how we said that no matter what would happen our hearts would never forget. And they never did. They never lost touch. Our souls never ended their embrace. What broke was logic and reason. What broke was our ability to try and understand that which could never be explained.
So I ignored your comment about not understanding me because you understand me just fine. And I stopped trying to knock down the wall you built because it wasn’t making things better it was making them worse. The more I chased you the faster you ran away. So I placed my faith in something else and decided that the best way to try to bring you home was to try and shine a light on our soul.
Yes, our soul, not yours or mine but ours.
It is a risk. It is a gamble and it is something that could end up biting me in the ass. But sometimes you need to stop and evaluate whether what you are doing is working and clearly what I did wasn’t. So here I am working on other things. So here I am living my life in a different place and a different way than I once thought I would. But that doesn’t mean that the place I find myself in is forever. It is just a temporary spot to occupy and if what my heart says is true than life will change when it changes.
And when you turn off your head and listen to your heart you’ll find your way back. Just remember whose eyes will always be staring back at you and that when you think of me I will be thinking of you.
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