two hundred fourteen

It was a moment of clarity before the whirlwind of insanity settled down and wrecked everything that came after.

I understand what you're saying. And I think that we'll be friends forever. But I really think we're missing a really important opportunity here. 

You agreed. But I don't think you were listening. You were trying to deliver your own agenda in the moment. And I heard you, although I wish I hadn't.

---

*I'll pick up the pieces and I put them back together now.
They may not be the right way, but that's okay - as long as they're all the same.

---

I don't understand how it all unraveled so quickly. How a shared path could become two separate paths after I had done everything I knew was right to do. 

I didn't realize that the pieces of the dream you had set before me were blocks made of pretend. Nothing of substance, so there was no topple, only an evaporation. All the planning made moot by your decision to walk away. 

So I feel like there are pieces missing as I try to put things back together. Pieces that make up a very different life than the one I am living now, the one I had hoped to be living by now.

So hardly anything feels right. I know that I'm working with everything that was there before, but not everything is the same. There are empty spaces, phantom limbs that ache with pain and itch with healing.

I wonder where the insanity lies. 

Is it in the fact that I'm still trying to make sense of what's been lost?

---

*And if you had noticed, well would you have thrown the towel in,
Before I missed out on all this love, and watch me roll away again,
Watch me disappear under my skin.

--- 

There's nothing for you to notice. You're gone. I accept this. In many ways, I am gone. Or at least, getting there. The towels have piled up, they're mildewing with tears that I've cried.

I don't blame you for coming-to, for coming to a realization that you really weren't interested in the shared path that you initiated and we created together. 

How can I?
Life should be what we want it to be. 

But that rational part of my mind, that acceptance - that brilliant moment of clarity in the peak of night's darkness - wasn't strong enough to cover the rage in my heart, the rage that without warning tore into the moments afterward. It was a dark night indeed. 

We rolled away. With the dawning of the new day, we had disappeared back into our own skins and the rules were different.

If only we had said goodbye then and there. If only we had embraced the finality of the decision made, instead of trying to make it work. For me, what came after was like dancing through a field of barbed wire. Still trying to be graceful and elegant, when every step continued to cut and tear through my flesh.

---

*I don't believe it, that things could get any worse than they did that time.
You must have seen it. I mean how could we get lost running in a straight line?

---

We got lost in it. In the insanity of trying to stay together when the wisest thing was to just walk away. We both said things, did things, that were ruled by the insanity that settled in and filled our minds with...

the hope that we could make it through to the other side? 
the idea that - with time - what we wanted (what you wanted) would indeed change? 

lies that did their best to undermine the truth we already knew.

It's a missed opportunity. No doubt about it. And one that I don't think will ever present itself again. And clearly, for the better, although my heart is still trying to believe it, still trying to make sense of the missing pieces.

But more than wanting you, I want someone who wants me, as I am for who I am. 

It will take me a long time to be your friend again.

There are just certain things that I shouldn't have to ask my heart to handle. So, I won't. At least, not any longer. 

---
*Lyrics from Jason Mraz's Running