I Packed My Bags And Got Ready To Leave. Took A Last Glimpse And Kissed Him On His Lips. This Was Goodbye.

Maybe I don't understand, not everything, that'd be a lie. For only you'd comprehend your feelings whole and sometimes even we can't understand what we feel, so to say I completely understand would be a total lie. But I do know, what it feels like to wanna be up, to give up that sleep and be invested in a conversation, to risk being sleepy the next day than to sleep and surrender all that could have been. I've been there, those sleepy days may feel terrible but every moment, every conversation of that night keeps me smiling and lifted through the day. Sometimes, there's even a glimmer of excitement hoping for the same the following night.

© Raina Rose.

It's a choice to be in love, as it is to be hurt by the ones we love. It's often those we love, that hurt us the most, because we've given them the ability to do so. We let them have special places in our hearts, prioritise them, their needs and wants, maybe get a little addicted to their company with more time and similar routines and let ourselves merge as though the process often completes us and makes us whole. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. But it is a choice, all of it is. And as much as it hurts, that's the beauty in love, to choose to be vulnerable with the ones we love, to give them the ability to see us whole, to see us naked, for all that we are, the flaws and beauty, saints and sinners. We choose to be in love knowing it might just wreck havoc before it's all over. We choose love over and over again, because despite the pain, there is beauty in vulnerability, there is beauty in being hurt by love, by the ones we love. This was our choice, to love and to hurt.

© Raina Rose.

The thing most heartbreaking about it all is falling in love again. It's insanity wanting to repeat the process, taking chances and trying all over again despite the failures and pain, now that, that has to be heartbreaking. To think you've dealt with the worst thrown at you and to crawl back out from under the sheets, with wounds only healing, barely being held by stitches you made half awake in pain, maybe drunk. Why would you want to do it all over again?

To be brave enough to put your heart back out on the line 'cause the last hit and run didn't kill you. Yet. To start a conversation with men who could care less but of course, you manage to convince yourself otherwise in the name of hope these days. To drive yourelf crazy whenever they don't respond or when you get stood up or when you make a comment and that worked before but didn't now and you look stupid for trying. When you do your best to really just be loved but God, they make it so hard.

You get a little more mad each day. Waking up, thinking that the day ahead will hurt less than the day before but we both know that, that statement dissolves away everytime you see him around the corner, creeping into your thoughts and mind with things and words and places that remind you of him. You lose pieces of yourself over time each day and you can barely hold it all together, but you still try anyways.

Then, one day, God gets tired of playing with you so he sends someone your way and just for a bit it seems okay. You don't lose your mind, you start trusting him (because loving wasn't enough) and you tell him things that made you sad, that hurt you, you speak of your demons and pain, not to garner sympathy but in hopes he understands better, in hopes that he will know better. Eventually, you lose track of time and the days drift by and all you do is smile and fill your days with his presence. Slowly, you start falling in love again and when you're completely losing yourself for him, he pulls back without hesitation and now, you're falling, unbound when you should have been held. By the time you realize that you're broken, he's gone, God's laughing and you're back to square one with nothing left but a bleeding mess we call heart, a broken one in fact. Too broken this time around.

So no, the worst always comes after the heartbreak. To be brave enough to try and fail again and maybe there's a beauty in that but it is insanity, really; doing the same things over and over again all while expecting different outcomes. It is heartbreaking. Love is heartbreaking...

© Raina Rose.

There is a silence in me these days. The voice I once used to hear on repeat has ceased to exist. She seems to have disappeared. I don't know if I miss her but there is a void where she used to be. I can't specify what it is exactly that I've lost but I've gained something else in return, silence.

© Raina Rose.

I tried getting you off my thoughts, out of my head and burned all that's left with sage. It was supposed to be refreshing, it felt like murder. I was supposed to be clean again, I had blood all over me. It was supposed to be soothing, I've never felt my heart rip apart this way. It was pain and agony. It should have been white but all I saw was red. Was it anger, love or hatred? I stood there frozen with blood all over the floor, memories dying one after another. I'd given you up in exchange for a life I'd be living dead...

© Raina Rose.

The Essence of Time

Time is defined as an indefinite continued progress of existence and events of the past, present, and future regarded as whole. How wonderfully ambiguous is that?

I’ve not known another person more bothered by time than myself. Maybe, because I lost plenty along the way, I started running alongside it, trying to jump onto the next thing before whatever was before was ever done. And maybe, I didn’t care, as long as I could run and keep up, it didn’t matter. But how does one run without failing and falling? I set myself some of the most absurd and unrealistic expectations in life and I’ve come to understand why it’s been so difficult, why I’ve struggled so much with pretty good results and absolutely zero satisfaction. Maybe finding that answer was perhaps the best thing I have ever done for myself and it’s crazy because it’s something I have always known, it’s common sense, and yet I’ve been ignorant.

A professor who is very close to me once said that I had a void that needed filling and every time it was empty, I sought something or someone to fill that space. It sounded presumptuous, completely ridiculous and at that moment, even though I listened to her, I did not quite take it to heart or mind at all. Because it’s so much easier to believe that we are without faults, that we are not the reason for our own downfall and imperfections. So, I let myself believe what I needed to, that I did not have any such voids in my heart that needed filling. The thing is, she never told me where this void was, so why did I believe it was in my heart and not my head? Because I knew better and I’ve always known, that I have been a little more broken and empty, but it hurt to admit that aloud, let alone be told by someone who knows me a lot less than my best friend. It only makes sense for her to be wrong even though she was completely right.

So, I let that fact slide even though every single time I made another mistake or close to one, needed something more than calls and texts, every time I couldn’t differentiate a friend for something else, I remembered my void. I tried filling it with music, with gardening and books and poetry and sleep and every damn thing I could get my hands on. But I’ve been just about broken as I was and maybe there is no fixing this. Maybe, sometimes, you can’t fix everything and that’s okay. Maybe you’re not supposed to fix everything. And sometimes you need to tell yourself whatever helps you sleep better at night, right? It bothered me a little too much and once I started acknowledging my void, I started to realize I had tendencies; things I did because I thought I should, things I believed defined my existence and gave me purpose. And these things that have been hurting me were things I did to myself, things that have tortured my very soul were of my own doing. And I’ve had a hard time letting them go, but no, it isn’t a perfect fix because I don’t know how to fix myself or anything broken about me. I don’t know how to put myself back together without tape and glue that showed I’ve been broken before and scars and wounds that won’t heal sometimes so it always looks like I’m fighting a war on my own. I don’t know it all but I am trying.

It’s like this, for as long as there is soil and water and sun, plants will grow even when the pot may be broken. It’s amazing how they thrive even in the most excruciating weather and maybe I grew so accustomed to the weather and conditions that I let my survival depend on constant fear, pain, and paranoia. It’s been frightening that even when everyone let my reigns go, I couldn’t lose control, that I had to keep running and chasing the next thing without letting myself breathe. And I’m worn out, I’m exhausted so I slept every waking hour of my life these past few months. The irony of that sentence… 

I did, I slept every moment I got enough time to breathe, because I didn’t want to think anymore, I didn’t want to care anymore, I didn’t want to interact or exist. I just needed to stop running, and sleep. I was tired of time and how it never seemed exhausted of chasing it’s own tail over and over again every day. So, I took the clocks off my walls, I stopped wondering when the morning sun settled into afternoons and when the moon came up to greet the evening sky. I simply did not want to think about the time that was running out, I wanted it to stop, I needed time to standstill with me. Because I couldn’t go on anymore. But what was I running out of time, is something I’ll never know, but it was the feeling of losing faith, wasting days and precious hours that’ll never quite come back. I was getting older by the hour, and I hadn’t done that which others may have and I was in this insatiable competition with absolutely no one and I was exhausted. I gave up.

In sleeping to forget how the world moved on without my presence, I missed quite a lot. I missed all the quiet mornings I used to wake before the world where I had coffee and was alone with my thoughts and words. I missed the many sunsets that colored the walls of my room in deep shades of amber. I missed the smell of my books, the kind of subtle hints of fresh print and maybe a little bit of mint that tells you just how old the pages were. I missed the way my pen felt in my hands when thoughts flowed and turned into words on every page of my journal. I missed losing the voice in my head and when everything got really quiet every time I sat on my own at the park, mesmerized by the million lives that unfolded around me where I existed enough but not too much. I missed the rain and how cold it got with every breeze and watching the raindrops trickle down my windowpane, it was simple yet fulfilling. I missed things that made me, me. In running alongside something I could never control, I lost control of the things I had. The world seems different now that I’m awake but the chaos that existed within seems to have subsided. For now.

I got so consumed with a lot of things and maybe I’ve forgotten how to breathe. I chased that which I couldn’t have in hopes of avoiding a void I knew I couldn’t fill. I let myself believe otherwise, and I’ve looked away from my shattered pieces for a long time now that I don’t quite recognize my own reflection anymore. I’m learning, still growing and maybe I am broken, and maybe there’s nothing I can possibly do to fix that. Maybe the time I’ve come to hate so much will never change for me, maybe there will always be a void in me even when I’ve had much to love and do. But in this very moment, I’ve learnt to live with my void. That’s the only thing that matters, not time, but this moment right here. Stay in it, dwell within this moment and everything that’s to unfold will eventually happen but this moment will never come back. This moment here is all that matters and that is the essence of time.

© Raina Rose.

I've missed plenty, but never this way, it feels like a part of me left and has yet to return. I can't help but feel incomplete whenever I'm not with you.

Come home love,

R.

How I wish we didn’t part ways. You remain completely intact in my memories and sometimes I wish I could forget you, because it is impossible to think of you without feeling all the pain that came along with the love I once felt for you, and perhaps still do. All it took was one night, a mere six hours and I knew I’d never be the same again but I lost you as soon as I found you. It’s like feeling beautiful and complete one moment and then completely broken and lost the next. How I wish we didn’t part ways because now every time I think of you, I cry without feeling sad, I wince in a pain I do not feel and there is this emptiness in me and I feel so numb, engulfed in the darkness. Your name on my lips feels wrong, your messages don't make me smile like they used to before, your gifts seem like they were sent to me by mistake and everything keeps trying to undo itself while still being a part of me. Like they want to be set free, as though we don’t belong together anymore. Now, it feels like I have to let go even when I don’t completely want to. I fell in love and there wasn't an alternative, you walked away and I didn’t have a say, now all that’s left with me wants to quit and I won’t be holding them back either...

© Raina Rose.

Monday, you promised you'd come home, the door was left open.

Tuesday, a little late but I thought I could wait.

Wednesday, I went through the laundry to find your clothes, hoping they still smelled like you.

Thursday, tasted a lot like you when I emptied the bottle of bourbon.

Friday, I was sober enough to think again but you were still missing.

Saturday, I got a call asking if I'd written the eulogy.

Sunday, I realized you were never coming home again...

© Raina Rose.

You're the song I wish to fall asleep to every night. You're the song I listen to on repeat and never tire of. You're the song that keeps me company even when I'm crowded by a thousand. You're the kind of song that makes my heart flutter. You're the song I know every lyric to by heart. You're the song that gets me excited just by having the music come on through a melody. You're the song that makes me smile even when I can't. You're the song that makes me fall in love all over again. You're the song I'll dance to dressed in white with the one I've loved, for I've loved you...

© Raina Rose.