Waking
Up
For a year, you were the sunrise that my world
awakened to, the beating heart around which my whole existence centered. I saw
nothing but you, could not spend a waking minute without your presence on my
mind. What could I see beyond the most perfect element of my life, the most
wondrous magic ever to grace my soul?
It took me the longest time to learn the truth, to see
that the dawn did not materialize at your behest nor did the stars
glimmer because of your majesty. The world did not hold its
breath when you entered a room. Cosmos were far greater than you could
ever dream of being, and I had been so blind that my eyes could not see that.
In many ways, I woke up, let the dream fade from my vision to view the reality
it concealed. So much time was spent longing for you that my perspective was
limited to black and white. For that tumultuous year, my grasp on reason
was obscured by the brilliant light in my eyes. I let myself fall by the
wayside, cried tears of lovelorn agony when left to my own devices, and wanted
nothing more than to be yours. True, I could see the perfection in nature’s
grand works of art, but to me, they were all tied to you. Separation was not a
concept I could fathom, my mind so deeply besotted that your shadow fell over
every surface.
And then I woke up.
Angels wept, hope shattered into a
million shards, the earth stopped spinning for one terrified moment. Life
was baffled by the shift in reality, by all the stars falling out of
alignment as they tumbled back down to the world below. The Mirror of
Understanding cracked, the truth so distorted that none could ever see things
as they once were reflected on its visage again. The pages in the storybook
reached their conclusion, leaving me with only The End instead of Happily Ever
After. It was a goodbye, and alas, there was no beginning to follow it, only
uncertainty hovering all around. So lost was I, without direction, unable to
see the world as it had once been. Nothing held familiarity. For so long, all I
had seen was you. Sun, sky, moon, shadow. Not one was without your mark. I’d
written about them in relation to the feelings you gave me, and when at last, I
had to cast them aside, I found myself alone in a world I did not know. That
is the world I traverse now, direction eluding me as reason once had in the
folly I knew to be love.
For now, I move through an unfamiliar landscape, seeking a
path out of the endless labyrinth towards a future absent of your presence. The
terrain is rugged, the sky overhead raining down on me at the darkest of
moments, but still I persist. Far from the blissful Valhalla of newfound love
I’ve ventured, past the jolt of emerging unprepared for reality’s bitter glare,
I’m somewhere in between melancholic loneliness and wholehearted acceptance. A
world without you still waits for me, and until my heart heals, I ache for
another sunrise to warm this gelid void of night.
