I woke up this morning and realized it’s been nearly a year since I last saw your face. 355 days.  It’s been nearly a year since I stood in the middle of my living room and watched you walk out the door – of my apartment and my life. I see now, that in a certain sense, I have been holding my breath ever since.  Holding my breath hoping against hope that you would see things my way, that you would feel me in the marrow of your bones the way that I felt you, and that you would find the trail of crumbs you left behind, and make your way back here, no worse for the wear.

Of course, that is simply wishful thinking; or perhaps obsessive-compulsive bullshit; or finally the last residual bits of the deep period of mourning that I have been stuck in since you and I went our separate ways.

Now you come to me in my dreams. You beckon me and I am tempted to follow you into underground garages, into abandoned warehouses, into black cars idling at the curb.  I am tempted.  But I know better.  I know that had you been the person my life needed most, you would have known it, and you would have found your way back.  Not so.  Not so.

I wonder sometimes when I will stop longing for the outcome to be different between us. I wonder when I will truly accept that there is no “us”. I wonder when I will realize that I made the right choice, the empowered choice; in fact, I made the only choice I could. I know that I need and deserve certainty. I also know that life is not certain, nothing is; certainly not the love of another human being. It is inherently risky, even on a bell-clear day. There is no certainty in whether love will last, whether love will come, or whether that particular love will choose me, above all others. I cannot control the heart that beats in another person’s chest. I can only continually be willing to risk my own heart. 

So, that’s what bubbles to the surface this morning, almost a year later.

I am forging a willing heart. Today, that’s enough.

Copyright 2008 – Shavawn M. Berry

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