empty chords

Dear K-

I know your ghosts. We are haunted by the same shadows of loneliness and doubt, the pathetic uncertainty that we’ll ever be loved by anyone who we love as much. Someday we will die. Will there be someone at our side, someone with whom we have grown old? What if there is nothing but a dark, bleak emptiness and my emergency contact is someone I hardly even know?

We’ve lost. We’ve lost again and again. You left your pain in Missouri, I left mine abroad. Let’s face it: we’re not the luckiest when it comes to succeeding in love, no matter how much anyone tells us we deserve better. We can paint it up and try to disguise it anyway we please- with pretty words smattered upon a yellowing page, with pints of whiskey and cheap cigarettes, by burying ourselves in our work and proving that we can be good at something…but in the end there’s still that emptiness. The whiskey can’t wash it all away- I still remember how it feels to fall asleep in someone’s arms and feel comforted by the knowledge that you’ll wake up to their smile in the morning. Maybe you’ll go get breakfast. Maybe you’ll stay in bed all morning and waste away the day. Who cares?

But what now, when I lay alone and don’t have the comfort of anyone? Perhaps I’m still in denial, expecting an apologetic phone call or an invitation to dinner. I check the phone. I check the mail. But I’m still alone. Phone lies dormant, dead, on the windowsill. Mail is nothing but bills and advertisements for the local grocer.

Don’t mistake me. This has happened before, which is perhaps why it makes me feel so ashamed and disgusted with myself. But it also brings the experience of knowing this will pass. For now I can only get along the best I know how, trying not to think of what I’ve lost. But we’re always going to be reminded, aren’t we?

Try not to regret. We’re the better for all our mistakes and missteps, as painful as they may be. Perhaps we will never obtain the promise that has been made to us since we were children. But I’d rather not think of that for now.

Regret nothing.
-K