There will be no distance

What if I have no energy left for this? What if it’s all cost, and no reward? Shall I just keep trying and trying and hoping for a different result?

I know I am not perfect. I could have taken a different approach. Maybe I am too impatient. Maybe my expectations, which seem so small and reasonable to me, are an intolerable imposition. Perhaps, when we were younger, I simply failed to notice the signs. Or did something switch in you? Or me?

Did we just get old? Intractable? Was there a dark poison we both mistook?  

To be honest, I am too tired for the forensics. The accumulated corrosion has rendered the truth irrelevant. Sorry, but I just don’t care anymore. Don’t care to apportion responsibility. Don’t care for another round of simmer, explode, sorry. Don’t care for eggshells. For band aids. For hoping.

It is said that we can grieve inside or outside our relationships. I have been mourning the gathering ruination for nearly twenty years. Scratching my head, banging it against walls. Trying this and that. Looking for a way to break the cycle, to hit reset and wipe the grime from the gem we once shared. Created. Nothing worked. The trend continued.

Now – tapping out the dents from another collision – even my sadness is done. Replaced by relief. Lightness. The anchor, the node of heaviness, dissolving.

People say, oh but all those years; to which I reply, years of what? As if sheer length of association means we should gravely endure, just in case. Sorry, but I am not one for sunk cost fallacies. Not anymore.

I wish you no ill, and will visit no deliberate cruelty upon you, (although you may say that this is me being cruel right here). But I will spend no more energy, waste no more emotional effort, feel no more bafflement and frustration. I will stop trying to puzzle out what happened to this person I once knew and loved. Or what it was that flipped in me. Doesn’t matter anymore.

Cut cord. Rinse blood off blade. Enjoy the pretty colours of bridge in flames. Take my energy back. Recharge power pack. Do something else.

I will be the bad guy. The one who chucked it in. The abandoner. Let them gather round and offer you comfort. I will not be seeking their approval.

I did not seek permission to love you. I did not wish to stop. But I did. For this, I offer neither apology nor defence.

As I have aged, I have come to realise that there is nothing that cannot be let go. Furthermore, that letting go is joyous. There will be those who accuse me of throwing things out in haste, but patience and endurance often go undetected. People only see the fire, not the long process of making the fuel.

In the space, my irritations will evaporate and, with the soft mercy of days, the beautiful things will loom once more into focus. The things you taught me. The way you saved me from myself. Showed me another way to be. These will be my travel companions. And in this way, there will be no distance.