Today, I can contemplate a future without you and I am just as happy. I still think about you and still believe in your worth. It's time for me to move on, to hold onto a happy heart, to not feel guilty when I'm tasting a luxurious dessert or swimming in the ocean or just enjoying life.
I want to start over fresh. I still have a lot of moments where I feel like I can do it, but then I revert and crash and feel ashamed and weak. I hear a song that brings me to hidden tears. Just the mere hint of you and I'm shattered. It's hard to keep that under wraps, to pretend that I'm fine and to put up a nonchalant front, to hold things in and to deny, deny, deny. It's hard to hold everything in and to not talk about it because I'm afraid. And it's not fair to anyone else because they are competing with the ghost of a relationship. I wouldn't want to be second-best, either.
I learned that I really don't need anything else. I've got me, I've got my ambitions and ideals, I've got a pocketful of family and good friends, and I have the memory of a wonderful and sad and awful and chaotic love.
For the first time, I can really understand why my aunt, my brilliant, hippie, tenured Berkeley professor of an aunt, has never married and yet still lives a full life and is now retiring to Hawaii. My family used to pity her. Now I can celebrate her for living a fulfilling life.
Maybe it seems like I'm the epitome of one of those starkly feminist women, the ones that don't ever need men. That's not true. I'm open to someone interesting and wonderful and happy. It's just that he doesn't have to live in your shadow anymore.
No comments:
Post a Comment