Waking Up

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.