LOSS

I DON’T KNOW if I have the words I need to tell you everything I want to say. I don’t know if I have enough creative impulses to get it all down on paper and truly convince you of my story. I don’t really know where any of this is going. But I remember having dreams once. I remember believing in the impossible. I remember being someone else once. I don’t know where she went. I think she died in the process. Between independence, diagnosis and disappointment, I’ve lost her somewhere. I tried to blame scleroderma. I tried to blame lupus. I tried to blame God. I tried to blame the world. But it’s no one’s fault. She couldn’t take the pressure anymore. So she left.

The old me broke up with the new me and she left both of us broken-hearted. Imagine that, feeling the broken heart of two people at one time beating in your own chest. Grief becomes inevitable, depression a necessity.

I longed for the old me, like every lover does at the beginning of a separation. I went back to her time and time again. I begged for forgiveness. I promised to change. But nothing seemed to work. I spent hours and hours reliving her dreams, trying to believe in them again. But she and the dreams kept slipping away. I studied her face in old pictures and thought about how beautiful she was. I closed my eyes and remembered feeling safe and secure in her skin. I felt lost. I felt empty. I was afraid of being someone else. I had grown accustomed to her routine. She and I had wanted the same things before, had laughed at the same things before, believed in the same things before. And yet, like every sad love affair that comes to an end, she left because what she needed and what I could give her no longer were the same, and the new me was left with the shattered pieces of a broken heart that didn’t even exist.