September 21, 2024
Watching it turn to dusk out my window just now, my mind rested on Jeff. I felt that warmth flow through me, from my center out. That love feeling I used to feel all the time, could not stop feeling for such a very long time. Years. That feeling, then, was not just bittersweet, it was torturous.
But this time, it was just a warmth.
I marveled, again, at the fact it’s been six years over and done. Closer to seven. So long, so long.
When you have a great love, and it ends, it’s frozen for all time at that place where it ended. There is no picking it back up where you left off. Not after any time has passed. Most certainly not after six years have passed. That great love no longer exists. It cannot be resurrected; it cannot be recreated. If it could, it would lose its essence. It would be something else entirely.
Even if I wanted to, and I don’t, I can’t go back because that Coco no longer exists. For a while she did, for a year, maybe two. And then I grew and changed and became an older, wiser, better version of myself. I don’t have the same need for self-destruction because I don’t have the same flaws. I have plenty of flaws, but not those same ones that cost me — and Jeff — so much so much. Not any longer.
It was a misguided situation from the get, and all the way along, and especially ugly there at the end. I’d never put myself through something like that again. It’s hard to even imagine having been in the head place that caused me to make those decisions. Thankfully, I no longer live in that head place. I still struggle, but I’m better. I have a lot more peace, now.
I wondered why I felt such a warmth thinking of Jeff, without all the other shit that usually comes with remembering how desperately I loved him. Without the anger that comes from the memory of how he took advantage. Without the self-loathing that comes when I remember how badly I fucked it up there at the end. Well, I just blew that all to pieces, writing down what I usually remember when I remember Jeff.
I lost a little bit of peace right there.
Oh well.
I’ll get it back in short order.
Time does that.