Open the Gate

When we met, the world was different and we were different in it. 

You had a life growing inside you and I felt as if I was the walking dead. Standing there on borrowed time waiting for it to run out. 

Your face seemed sad but had a glimmer of hope. Was it due to the baby you were yet to bare to the world? Was it the temporary respite you'd receive from the humdrum of work? Was it something else? 

You were younger, still are younger, than I. Looking at the world through a lens I can never see through. That of a young mother, that of uncertainty to the life your child will lead, a clouded future blurred by past pains and fears. 

That I could relate to, being in my own cloud of pain. A pain I wanted to keep to myself lest I foist it onto another. How could I share this pain with someone who was on the brink of something so grand as motherhood? How could I bring my sorrow and doubt and fear to someone who seemed to have their own and no want of mine? 

You told me that you looked my way and I was afraid. There I was on the edge of forever one foot hanging over the edge ready to plunge and there you were throwing me a lifeline. 

You couldn't have known the depths of my sorrow, the ache in my heart. You were driven by your own ache, an ache for companionship, an ache of lust, an ache of striking out with one's feelings since our lives are short and sometimes you need to risk the heartache for a chance at a full and exacting love. 

I let my pain and my fear speak to you. I had nothing to give. No heart, no future, no will even to live. I was ready to step off that ledge but I turned and saw you standing there once more. 

A young woman, a life inside ready to meet the world, a fear in her eyes, a small smile on her face. A face that was ready to hide at a second glance. Skin that was electrified by the most innocent of touch. A heart aching for someone, a heart aching for me. 

I couldn't fathom how she could look at me and see anything but a wretch putting on airs to hide the fact that his insides were crumbling away. Decay and rot had taken hold and a smile and a laugh were but feeble veils to screen the world from that reality. 

Perhaps love is blinding, perhaps she saw and didn't care. Perhaps in a world of woes and sorrows two people full of doubt find each other to try and bring about something new and bright and warm. 

I gave you time to reconsider, to let your passions wane, to let myself decide if living was what I wanted, if life was worth the pain. 

You had the child, he was beautiful, is beautiful like his mother. 

I held you before I held him. In my arms, in my heart. 

I wanted to show you and myself that life could be better if we let it be better, if we made it be better. 

You often spoke about not being good enough, how you'd end up alone. I didn't understand that thought at all. You were and are beautiful, smart, funny, determined, creative, strong willed, caring, and full of love to give those around you. 

You are also full of doubts and fears and sorrows, much like myself. But you need not hold onto those aspects when the others are so much more worth your energy. 

We have both found life renewed, even after all the bumps and bruises, cursed words, cold shoulders, and times apart. Life with another is never easy. It is full of loves and pains. 

We have both given ourselves up to one another to try and fight through that pain and fear. To find a solid ground so that we might stand together. 

You with your fears of standing alone. Me with my fears of wretchedness and death. 

We can let the world crumble below our feet or we can stand together hand in hand and build it up as one. 

The young woman I saw all those years ago has grown and become someone I'm sure she never expected she'd be. Strong, resilient, driven, ambitious. 

You are more than your pain, your fears, your doubts, your failures. You are so much more. 

I can't claim to always see it, when I can't see past my own failures. But I hope that you can. I hope that you can see yourself the way you deserve to be seen. 

I love you and I'm sorry. For being a wretch when you met me, for being a man with embedded doubts and fears about himself and the future. A man who was ready to step off the edge, that you unknowingly brough back from the brink. 

You are worth the world. 

What Do You Want From Me

Why after years and plenty of dismissals do you return to my thoughts? Entering my dreams and making feelings resurface. How did a blink of an eye turn into something that keeps returning over and over again?

Why am I paying any credence to any of these thoughts? I doubt they mean anything more than just regurgitating old feelings. Feelings that haven't been strong for almost a decade.

Is it the fact that the thought of you for so long was something I attached so much to? Is it because the prospect and the idea behind our chance meeting hold so much weight to my romantic idealist mind? The fact we met for the briefest of moments and weren't tied down by harsh realities until the moment passed?

The memory of that night is faded and warped by actions taken since then but I guess the underlying romance of it persists like a blinking light, the battery slowly dying, succumbing to the darkness around it.

I haven't wanted you in years nor do I believe that there would be anything for us if we were to meet again. But the dreams still come at the most random of times.

No contact for almost two years and yet.

It's annoying to say the least. I wonder if you'll persist inside me for the rest of my life. I wonder if all my lost loves will haunt me and taunt me. If you and a few others who've occupied such a large part of my heart will walk with me in my dreams forever.

I guess the hurt comes from not having any one of you walking with me while I'm awake.

Even after all this time? Always.

There are these memories inside my head. When I examine them I realize something strange about them. They aren't mine. They come from a life that I'm not leading, a life that was lost to me. Memories of a life I could have led but can't lead now. They come and go, they taunt me when I need them to leave me be. What can be done with them? I can't black them out with a permanent marker since the don't exist on paper. They aren't recorded on film and can't be cut or burned away. Without a foundation in existence they shouldn't be able to plague me like they do and yet...

I see a young face, not unlike my own, with a tinge of her. Her eyes, my hair, her smile, my nose. The contours shift from real to surreal as the image blurs. This person doesn't exist yet she haunts my memories. Playing and wrestling with her older brother. Sun in her eyes, wind in her hair. A tooth missing here and there. A smile as large as the love I have for her and her mother.

These aren't memories, you'd say. They are fantasies, fabrications, dreams, wishes, that won't come true. And to that I say, no. They are memories of a life I failed to lead. The version of me living right now was insufficient to acquire that life. My faults overshadow the faults of the other players in the scenario. The links were broken and all that remain are the memories.

The memories and a desire to come clean. To voice the blame which is held tightly to my chest. I want the weight of my failures to be lifted. There needs to be one last connection to let them know, to let her know, the guilt I feel. The guilt tied to those memories and the way things failed to be. How if I was a better version of myself, a healthier version, a stronger version, then the memories wouldn't be from somewhere else. They'd be tied to reality. To the waking hours, to the long nights, to the mornings, afternoons, and evenings shared with them.

No longer alone. With the ones I loved so dearly but was too weak for them. Not a day goes by that I don't lament my weakness. My inability to pull myself up and dust myself off and fight for that which I loved. But weaknesses are sometimes too difficult to overcome. Sometimes it seems best to push those away before the self-destruction destroys them as well. To save them from the pain of longevity. To save them from an all encompassing failure. To save them from a history repeating itself.

I've lost what I've loved most. Two things, equal in importance. The strong willed, confident, happy, proud, kind, empathetic, patient, love filled self that got lost in the darkness. And the one who loved me for all my faults, the one who loved me for who I was despite my failures. The who held me like I've never been held. The one who showed me there was hope for a future. The one who brightened my life with her smile, her eyes, her world. The one who was afraid things would repeat themselves from her own past. I never wished to replicate that in us. I failed in that and I'm sorry.

If I could rewind time, and be strong enough to weather the darkness, I'd have sought help. Got myself back to good, and sought to remedy our woes. Perhaps that time has passed us forever, perhaps it hasn't. I don't want to hold out if that life I have memories of is indeed gone with no possibility.

For now though my fears are still too strong. My life hangs on a thin string. I'm still seeking health and solace in myself before I try to fix what I broke with us. I can't have you repair me though I wish you could. I can't burden you with these woes, that are a lifetime in the making. I won't be selfish. I can't be selfish. You don't deserve that. When your own struggles are so heavy. Adding my own is unfair.

Things might change or they might wither away. I can't say. I'd rather not think on that now. I'll simply let the memories play on and hope for a day when they become real or die away.

I will always love you
There's no one else above you