Birds and Angels
There’s this thing about failed love.
It makes you feel like you’re broken, tainted. You scare easily. The slightest difficulty triggers a crushing wave of doubt and fear and that all too familiar feeling of waking up in the morning and hating your life.
That feeling of desperation as you watch the light and love evaporate for the person you are supposed to love and trust more than anyone else in the world. You remember what it’s like to watch love crumble to dust from the pressures of the outside world and the constraints of the relationship.
The exquisite pain and exhaustion of the aftermath haunts you.
The idea of signing up for the possibility of another failed love seems insane. It is perhaps the exact opposite of the phenomenon under which some women lose the ability to recall the pain of childbirth. The memory of that pain is seared into your soul.
Still, we search for love. We long for someone to come home to at the end of the day. We trudge on.
It is my hope that perhaps if the memory of failed love has to leave such ugly scars, it can also teach us lessons that prevent more failure. Maybe, just maybe, we can take from that horrible experience a new appreciaion for the delicate affection of another person. Maybe we can keep more realistic expectations. Maybe our familiarity with the process of giving up on love can fill our well and help us choose love when it is the hardest choice to make.
Maybe you have to learn what dead love looks like to keep it alive. To drive you to make the choice to work harder when it is the most important and yet hardest decision to make. Maybe losing love gives you a gratitude for it that helps overcomes difficulty.
Maybe you just have to decide that it’s worth finding out.
At this point in my life
I’d like to live as if only love mattered
As if redemption was in sight
As if the search to live honestly
Is all that anyone needs
No matter if you find it
You see when I’ve touched the sky
The earth’s gravity has pulled me down
But now I’ve reconciled that in this world
Birds and angels get the wings to fly
If you can believe in this heart of mine
If you can give it a try
Then I’ll reach inside and find and give you
All the sweetness that I have
At this point in my life
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I always used to think “THIS time will be different” and then everything went to shit again and I’d plunge on thinking “THIS time will be different”.
And then, at some point, I found this poem. And this poem pretty much sums up my experience with love…
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I fall in.
I am lost… I am hopeless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I’m in the same place.
But it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in… it’s a habit
My eyes are open
I know where I am
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.
I walk down another street.
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‘Autobiography in Five Chapters’ is taken from the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.
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Except… I don’t know that I am QUITE to “I walk down another street” yet.
.-= MsDarkstar´s last blog ..Coffeehouse Sunday Post =-.
Damn. I really, REALLY wish I had the courage to do this. Kudos to you. I’m still hiding out and waiting for the fairytale knight in shining armour disguised as a UPS delivery dude. Can’t figure out why the happy ending hasn’t arrived yet. Hell, the soundtrack hasn’t even started. What am I possibly doing wrong?
.-= emma´s last blog ..Unsaid =-.
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