the hardest part

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved

Sonnet 116 - William Shakespeare

Packing Up

I am almost done with the packing. Just a few more boxes and everything I've collected over the last few years should be put away and ready to move home.

The first time things between Irch and fell apart, I got a box. I filled that box with everything he'd given me, all the letters and little nicknacks and presents. I couldn't stand to look at them, and so I boxed them up and put them on the highest shelf in my closet and didn't look at them again until things looked like Irch and I might have another chance.

I took the box down, and started going through it again, reading each of the letters again, and running my hands over each little item inside the box letting the memories of each thing fill my mind, and it made me feel good that I'd held on to all of it. Because I could see how far we came from.

This time I put everything back in the box, there are more letters this time and more little things, anything else and the box would be too small. I resisted the urge to go through it again, to read the letters and post cards again. I don't think I could stand it.

As I've been cleaning out the apartment I've been throwing things into the box that were from him. And tonight I thought I'd gotten everything, so I taped up the box.

Of course now, hours later, I keep finding things that he gave me. Letters he sent that were hiding under papers and things that have so become a part of my room that I didn't notice that they were from him.

And it just seems like no matter how many times I open that box again, there will always be something else I need to put in there, something that reminds me of him. That brings back a memory, that pulls me from the present back into that time when things seemed perfect.

I just want to pack it all away, all the things and memories and emotions. I just want to pack them away so I don't have to feel them anymore, I don't have to remember, or feel. But it doesn't seem like there will ever be an end to the things that bring it all back.

Proverbs

Everything passes; everything wears out; everything breaks.

I am about to start a new phase in my life - that seems to be a constant theme for me over the past few years actually. I am getting ready to move at the end of this week - back home with my family. I am a little less than excited about this, after years of living on my own.

Unfortunately it seems like the best idea for the time being so I can focus more of my attention on my progress toward graduate school. I am excited about this prospect of the move, I am ready to get serious about school again.

I've had to put my plans for graduate school on hold several times already, so I hope that in moving home I'll be able to focus more and actually pull through.

I am also hoping the change in locations will help me with a change in my life. I am ready for this part of my life - the part of being hurt and miserable and unsure of everything - can be left behind during my move.

I want to leave it behind and start fresh again.

I know it's not going to be easy, or quick, but I am hoping a change of scenery, where so many places remind me of things I can't have anymore, I'm hoping that will help the healing.

I'm tired of feeling unwanted, and just all the myriad of emotions that I've been feeling recently. I am ready to be happy again - I am ready to feel good about myself again - I'm ready to start moving on. Even though it's scary as hell.

Let go of my hand

I don't consider myself a very independent person. I never have really - though I suppose looking back on it I've almost always been independent, forced to be in many situations.

I suppose I just like not having to be independent all the time. I like having someone around that I can depend on. It's nice, not to have to constantly be in control, when in so many areas in my life that is what I have to do.

Now to find myself without that hand to hold and gentle guidance, it feels like I am lost at sea. It's not a pleasant feeling to be tossed about by the waves daily, never sure what the morning will bring. And yet that is what I am faced with daily.

Today I had a minor crisis, and the first person who jumped into my mind to ask for help was Irch. I even started writing him before I stopped myself.

I am just not in a place right now where I can talk to him, the hurt is still too near. But where does that leave me, then?

I was, of course, able to find others to help, but it felt like second best - the one person who has been there helping me and guiding me for years, wasn't an option this time. I feel equally lost when it comes to the big changes that my life is fixing to go through.

How am I supposed to deal with all this without him?

And yet, I know I'll survive, and I'll do the things I want to do - on my own. It's just going to be hard.

Sleep on it

I think one of the hardest things about everything that has happened recently - beyond the obvious - is that my sleep has been so thrown out of whack.

As many of you know, Irch would call me every night before I went to bed. It became our little pre-sleep ritual, and it left me with a sense of well being and feeling very loved every night so that I could fall asleep easily. Or as easily as I ever fall asleep.

I've found that since we're not talking anymore, when I go to sleep, I lie awake for hours. No matter how tired I was before I got into bed, no matter how many chapters of my book I read, no matter how long I've stared at the bright light of my computer screen in the darkness of my bedroom, I just lay there with nothing but my thoughts.

That's the hardest part.

During the daylight hours, when there is work, and people, and television to keep me distracted and keep my wandering mind from going places that I'd rather it didn't, I don't usually have a problem keeping my emotions and such in check.

But at night, when it's just me lying in my bed, staring up to the ceiling, and listening to whatever annoying bird has decided that the middle of the night is the perfect time to start singing, well it's a little harder to control where my mind wanders. And of course, one of the first places it goes is to him.

So some nights, it's I wonder what he's doing right now, or I wish I could call him just to talk for a little while, or I wish I had someone to sing me to sleep, or Why wasn't I good enough, or What did I do wrong, or If I did this would he want me back.

Usually it's a mix of all of those that keeps me awake until the wee hours of the morning - so that I will push the snooze button 5-10 times in the morning, and seriously debate with myself every day whether or not I should just call in sick to get just a few more hours of blissfully ignorant sleep. I find it's the one time my mind doesn't wander to him.

There are some nights when I can just turn off the light and go to sleep, I am just hoping those sorts of nights become more and more frequent.

New Ground

It's hard, finding a new foot hold on such shaky ground. But I aim to find my place and continue rebuilding all that was lost.

I'm still not sure what shape that will take, or how it will work, but I'm not just going to disappear. Of that much I am certain.