I finally realize now that the grief I’ve been navigating hasn’t been because I’m grieving you.
No.
It’s that I’ve been grieving the projection of you I desperately wanted.
The version of you that I contrived in my subconscious.
A life that I desired with someone who loved me as fully and as loyally as I did them.
I feel such a heavy loss for a love that never was and never would have been tangible.
Your potential.
I still grieve your potential.
In my mind, I fell in love with a beautiful, strong, caressing, and caring man.
A man who was stunning in his brokenness and was prepared to heal with me through my own.
A man who was willing to show me softness and protect my heart from all harm; especially harm that he could inflict.
I fell in love with a fantasy of who you could become and I turned my gaze away from the monster you were.
Shutting my eyes tightly to will the facade of you I imagined back into my mind during your moments of destruction.
Losing hope that that version of you would ever exist through every tear that escaped me.
Until it broke me and I lost sight of how beautiful and worthy I was.
I clung to that idea of you; grasping against you as though you were a jagged mountain side I was climbing.
Slowly but auspiciously making my way to your summit.
Ignoring anyone who warned me of your dangers.
Feeling the pain resonate through me as my footing slipped and my fingers clawed across the coldness of your exterior, my fingernails broken and bloody.
My screams for your storms to pass and your hand to be outstretched to reach mine carried away and lost in the howling of your berating gusts of wind.
Until my eyes were opened wide and discernment settled in me, allowing me to release you and fall from your cliffside.
Defeat of my hearts desires encompassing me as I prepared to hit bottom.
Landing broken in the meadows that surround you and represent my softness and longing, I was finally able to see the enormity of your darkness and pain.
Gazing up at the mountain peek where your heart lies hidden high above the clouds, I realized I would never find the version of you I fabricated.
I wanted to be the one standing next to him at the end of it all.
He simply didn’t exist.
I grieve him.
I grieve the love and the space I held for him, agonizing every night that this emptiness will never be filled.
Battling my own thoughts in war about my worthiness to be loved.
All I needed was a release from that pain from a man who brazenly chose me.
I simply want to be chosen.
I’m standing still and alone in heartache over a character of my own imagination in the end.
an invitation to witness the most sacred parts of me 