For the most part I'm okay. Or at least that's what I tell myself. Water under the bridge is just one more place to drown when your lose your footing and fall. But the water rushes on, and the echoes from the past continue to enter my thoughts, unwelcome, unbidden. Be it a song, a moment, a certain light that comes into the room, a familiar detail almost lost amongst the many, the mundane, the unremarkable. This time... it was a song.
One of my favorite radio shows to listen to comes on in the wee hours of the night/morning. It's a show that has some cool and weird topics, interesting approaches to just about everything spooky and creepy that you can imagine. I like it. And their buffer music is always interesting, most of it some of my favorites. And then they played that song, a song that's been around a long time, a song I've liked since the first time I heard it on the radio, a song that was infused with a sweeping moment filled with romantic sparks of fire, desire, and a realization of falling in love. Sounds corny, doesn't it?
I hesitate with offering details, and as painful as the memory is, it's uncomfortable recalling how swept-up I was with that moment, with that song, with how everything came together, with that person. I didn't know THEN just how false the presenting experience was, or just how played I was... until it was too late. Just the same, that damn song plays... and the recall is right then, right there in that moment. WHY does it still hurt so much?
The pain comes from the absence of closure, the discovery and continued realization that 'The person I fell in love with NEVER existed.'
It's not that complicated, really, once you know the details, and some of you already do. I've spoken to a therapist about the why's and wherefores of what happened then, and why the hell it's still got its claws in me. It always comes back to the same thing, that closure is almost impossible when you don't know WHO it is you're mad at, hurt by. A stranger that I thought I knew and loved, when the mask falls and revealed a stranger beneath, I realized I had no one to say goodbye to.
I don't hate that song, only the memory attached to it. And I also know how important it is to NOT shove those feelings down in order to not deal with them. I tried that once. More than once, actually, and all it did was harm. Lots of harm. If you don't face issues and problems, they will always and forever haunt you.
I'm haunted.
But I don't hate him. How can I hate someone I didn't even know? The man I fell in love with all those years ago wasn't the man who I broke up with. How frustrating, right? Oh, you've no idea. And I'm guessing all of the unsolved, unresolved and poorly controlled health issues have me heading down the path through nostalgia, enticing me to consider and pioneer and dwell on the past, the good memories along with the bad. I suppose it was inevitable.
I could easily blame it on the fact that few get me, that even those in my past who THOUGHT they got me... never did, and that no one ever would... but then, what would that help? Still, I think that often, daily, and wonder where the hell do I go from here?
I'm haunted. And as angry and incredibly hurt that I was, I don't hate him. Never did. Anger is what it is, and as they say... "Hurt people hurt people." I'm thinking... somewhere in his life he was hurt... terribly.
Haunted. Healing. Hopefully.
