мү cℓαү нεαят

The invisible hands that are always there for me have somehow disappeared. Where they are normally holding my heart in their beautiful warmth, now nothing but cold nothingness resides there; ice forming chains around what once was capable of truly loving someone. And there’s that one person…that one person who made my smile truly genuine – who made my laughter ring loud and clear, like the chiming of a bell. And what was it that connected the two of us? Nothing but a thin red string tying two hearts together in a bond tighter than friendship. Sisters. Sisters in every way. That person, a guardian to me, my light in the darkness, the peek of sunrays on a rainy day, the rainbow left behind after a storm passes through. And yet…now there is nothing.

I am a child without a guardian.

I am an abyss without a light.

I am a storm without the sun.

I am the hope of something better to come…yet the harsh reality that you know it never will.

How can that one person, the person you could truly claim to love knowing it would never change…be able to sway your heart like it is nothing but a delicate flower? That one person that once kept you as strong as an unbreakable tree plucked you from your fragile stem and left you there to wither and die on your own, without knowing if anyone will come and put you back again. How can that one person, whom you gave every ounce of trust to…so suddenly take it and break it like it were nothing but a twig?

The warm invisible hands that kept me steady are no longer around my shoulders, guiding me to where I must go next. The one human on earth that guided me in the right direction is no longer there. All I see is a figment of my imagination – a shadow standing in the intersection of a hallway, disappearing down one, and my attempts to follow and catch it are futile. It’s like trying to pour raindrops back into a cloud. It’s like trying to tame the sea. It’s like counting the grains of sand on all the beaches in the world. And it’s like trying to pick up the exact grains of sand that you let slip through your fingers somehow, someway.

The rock I built my house on is gone, swept away in the unending torrent of the real world. Now, all I reside in is a ramshackle hut on the edge of the sea, praying that, one day, the tide will come and wash it all away. That the tide will wash away the sorrows, the hurt, the pain, the rejection, the feeling of emptiness and hopelessness. That maybe, far out at sea, under the crashing waves, there is something better. A light. A guide.

Why is it…that when I finally trust a person completely, my rock leaves me? They disappear? They brush me aside like I’m nothing but dust on their shoulder? My heart is like un-drying clay. You can shape it however you want, whenever you want, if you have it resting in your hands. No one did. No one except that one person, and what once was a perfectly formed heart, brilliant and warm in all its splendor, took it, and turned it into nothing but flat misshapenness. Worse than being broken apart. Worse than having to pick up a million pieces. Because you know, somewhere deep inside what once was so full of life, that there isn’t going to be another person who will come along and reform what had taken seventeen years to form in the first place.

Seventeen years… Hoping. Waiting. Wondering.

Caring, but never truly loving.

Acting, but never truly meaning.

And there’s nothing left of me, for me, now. A voice tells me it’s necessary to go on, and I will.

But the darkness that has crept up inside my heart and stolen away the imagined warmth has taken with it the will to try and love again. Has taken with it the ability to lend out trust. It has replaced all of that with the right words to say – but there is nothing behind them but hopes of familial ignorance. Friend ignorance.

And yet the words written down betray my façade. They strip away what was once so well hidden, because what once was so well hidden could be hidden no longer.

The betrayal of one person – one person – has led to the wrecking of an entire system.

Where there should be warmth, there is ice.

Where there should be a beating, there is silence.

Where there should be emotions, there is nothing.

Where there should be a will…there is a blank slate.

Not a slate to signify starting over; no. A blank slate, a rock, that once had written on it all of the reasons that one must continue to live and do what they do. But now, one thing only is written:

Live not for yourself, but for others.

And one can do that, but not forever. It would be cruel to expect that of them.

So with the wind at my back, and the horizon far out at sea, it’s time to walk the waters and see that if, one day, there will be another person to once again reform the flat nothingness of what once was my little clay heart.