On Moving On

Disclaimer – if you are seeking expert advice on how to move on then I am afraid that I might disappoint you.  I have, in the past two months realized, that moving on is a personal maze conjured by who we are, which also means, it is a puzzle whose answer lies in us alone.  I hope though that my own account may somehow shed light on your own journey.  After all, as much as love is a universal experience, the loss of love remains to be its twin lurking in the shadows.  It is a reality we must all face.

My break-up was a bomb out of nowhere.  Sure, we had challenges but to me it was nothing that we could not solve.  I was wrong apparently.  And so there I was, hearing the explosion of “I can’t do this anymore” in my ears.  The pain seared from my brain to my heart, until the adrenaline kicked in that all I could do was muster enough courage to leave the room.  The bomb was only the beginning.  In any war, it is the remnants of the battle that endures.  The aftermath is what we have to live with.

First, I missed seeing the simple “good morning babe” when I woke.  Then, I would miss that voice and smiling face.  The worst part was missing how I knew the most important part of my life smiled because of me. It is this loss, despite its simplicity, that stabbed me as my daily routine changed.  Once I recognized that my everydays were different, the cut only grew deeper realizing how the future we planned was now but a child’s wishful thinking.  Every night I sleep to these thoughts and every waking morning I dread to face the day living with this harsh reality.

I tried to get by to salvage my battle-ravaged being.  I stitched the bleeding by losing myself in books.  I drained out the sorrow in countless days of weeping.  I hung out with friends to plaster the time I would have once spent with you.  I traveled to lose myself in the wonder of a new place.  All this I considered a part of the recovery plan of “moving on” and “letting go”.  All of which remained to be a temporary respite.  The cut was too deep and too wide.  The antidote was a labyrinth I could not decipher.

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Seven months later after writing the paragraphs above, I still am trying to rebuild a world without you.  There remains a void I try to fill.  I tell myself "maybe that is what moving on is - it is learning to accept that there will always be a space for you in my heart, and yet also learning to see that my life does not revolve around that chasm, but rather in the other parts that make me whole."