One Year
Lavender whisps lined the sky. These sunsets were her favorite; the burning orange slowly disappearing into the trees as its soft glow illuminated the outline of the summer evening clouds. They looked lavender. Her favorite color. The contrast was sharp, but gorgeous- powerful somehow. Seeing this just made the whole world feel beautiful- even if only for a moment.
Bright yellow broke through into her peripheral vision, but not from the sunset. She didn’t avert her gaze from the vibrant sky, not even to acknowledge the sunflowers begging for her attention. Mere hours ago, they were one of her most beautiful memories. Now, those memories were tainted with confusion and pain. Pain she’d known before, but more intense now. Pain that makes it difficult to breathe and weighs down one’s entire existence.
She was sitting- barely upright. The reclining lawn chair beneath her was the only thing separating her from the ground. She couldn’t stand, not right now, not on her own. Her body wasn’t hers to control; in that moment, and probably many more to follow, her entirety belonged to her grief and she was at its mercy.
Loss wasn’t something unfamiliar to her- and one might argue that she’d suffered the same type of loss mere months ago. But this felt different. That loss was empty and almost just a matter of going through the motions for the sake of it. Now it felt real and her entire world was beginning to crumble around her as she sat there, still unable to comprehend the reality of the situation. This time she lost a piece of herself and the uncertainty surrounding whether she’d ever be able to regain that part of her existence was growing with each passing moment.
Every time she blinked, she risked reopening her eyes to find only a blur of purple and gold emerging from the fuzzy silhouette of the enormous sweetgum tree towering over her yard. The tears came on their own now, without warning. Sometimes she didn’t even notice when they’d stop, because they’d surely return soon enough. And there was no correlation between the dryness of her eyes and how devastated she felt. Whether she was actively crying or staring blankly into space, her insides were on fire, her soul torn in two, and her ability to feel anything but misery was diminished.
How could one’s heart ache so much for someone it had only known a matter of months? Her heart clearly couldn’t judge time and felt as though this was so much bigger than five months. It felt the pain of the months they were supposed to spend getting to know each other better than either of them had known any of their other partners. It felt the distress of the years they’d spend together growing and building a life they’d both love because they just got each other- right from the beginning. Her heart and her soul were processing a lifetime of loss because that’s precisely what had been taken from her- a life- a happy life, a life that she had allowed herself to hope for and dream about, knowing that this time, it could actually come to fruition.
He stole that from her and he did it without a second thought. He just took it and disappeared without an explanation. They had plans in a couple days. They had other plans in a couple weeks. How did this happen? She tried to find reason in it. That’s what you’re supposed to do, right? If everything happens for a reason, then it has to be okay. She attempted to discover any silver lining, but every effort she made was futile and only left her more hopeless.
Time was what she needed- at least according to her loved ones and every piece of literature she could find on the topic. She scoured dozens of write ups- hoping that she’d find one gem hidden amongst them- just one to indicate what it was that she needed to do to be okay. Surely others had endured similar loss and could offer up a quick fix that she simply hadn’t thought of on her own. It would be something simple, easy, fast. It would take away all of this pain in an instant- and she’d bounce back as if the last five months never happened.
She would be happy to go back to focusing on her previous loss- the loss that didn’t feel like it even mattered anymore. The loss that felt like more of a gain, especially recently. It had been the removal of a negative force in her life. She had just been so afraid of change that even a positive one seemed terrifying to her. And it was for a while. But now she could understand that what happened back then really needed to happen, even if it was meant that she would be a bit broken for a while.
But isn’t that the beauty of being broken? You get to put your pieces back together- whether on your own, or with help- and in the end, the mosaic you create is almost always something stronger, more resilient, and more beautiful than before.
She used to believe this. She had even written this before- but after she painstakingly struggled to gather up most of the jagged pieces of herself that had been left in the rubble of the last life shattering event- the man who aided in reassembling them had turned out to be the biggest threat to the stability of it all. He was the one who mended her- if her soul could be represented visually, it would manifest as a patchwork quilt with some pieces uneven and not quite stitched together all the way. Some ends frayed and still actively unraveling- but at a slower pace than they had been. It would be noticeably worn and delicate but could be okay if taken care of and treated with love. He had woven her back together and she allowed herself to trust him to protect her and to make sure that she’d have a chance- a real chance- at becoming fully healed.
She never for a moment considered that since he was the architect behind patching her quilt into some semblance of a whole, he was the one who’d know just which thread to tug in order to completely unravel her.
She hadn’t the chance to heal enough to discover her new self- she was still in the process of doing that-with his help. He was the key to most of the progress she had made. Now she was ashamed and embarrassed that she’d so naively handed all of herself over to him, almost immediately tearing down the walls- the safeguards she'd put in place to protect herself. Her quilt had fallen into a pile of mismatched, frayed pieces- she couldn’t make sense of where any of it as supposed to go or how to even begin putting it back together.
What type of mosaic could be made from shattered pieces being almost immediately rebroken? Only this time, shattered smaller- obliterated into what could only be described as dust, with just enough shards scattered throughout that you’d still cut yourself if you attempted to sort through them- forcing her to choose one of two options: attempt to fix herself on her own and inevitably suffer, or sit there in the pain and allow it to consume her until it had nothing left to torture her.
Both options were miserable, but sitting in these feelings, in this broken state, involved far less effort than the alternative- which didn’t even offer the promise of any positive outcome, so why bother?
She didn’t know it then, but in one year’s time, she’d be on her own and happy again- arguably happier than she had been for the last decade. This was a different type of happiness- one she hadn’t experienced in longer than she could remember. A happiness where her contentment and joy were derived from within herself and the life she had built with the people who meant the most to her. There were no external antagonists disguising themselves as the heroes to infiltrate her heart and shatter it, no, she didn’t need those. She never really needed “another half” to complete herself as some say, but somehow, she had convinced herself that she did. Her focus on finding purpose and happiness through another being had been her downfall too many times in the past. There was the silver lining she had been looking for- it was in the lessons she’d learned and the growth she’d made and the strength she found. It was in all of those things, but it was mostly in the love for herself- the discovery of it, the encouragement, and the vigilant care she took to ensure that she never diminished its true value.
And now, the heart breaking, soul twisting agony that she went through for so long- all of that was a distant memory that she could barely even comprehend anymore.