My Closest Stranger

It's amazing what happens when you mix love with life, or life with love.  It changes people.  Not necessarily for the worst, or the best.  It's just a change.  And the biggest problem with change....its never easy, and its never quite soon enough.

Reading through previous posts, it's amazing how someone who once occupied the largest space in my world, in such a short period of time, can become a stranger.  As corny as it sounds - I immediately hear Gotye's Sombody That I Used To Know streaming through my brain.

There comes a point where you go from being best friends to the most intimate of strangers. Imagine walking past someone on the street one day, and immediately knowing every single thing about them.  Their deepest desires, fears, insecurities. Remembering the moments when you two were the only two people that existed. Recalling, in an instant, every moment that changed your lives for the better.  And in the next instant, remembering the pain they caused that you pray one day will subside.

The same person that will forever hold a place in your life, and in your heart, you now walk right past, refusing to make eye contact with. And then they're gone. You turn a corner, they turn a corner, and you keep walking - running - from an encounter you hope doesn't happen again.  But that you know will.

I suppose its easier that way.  It's easier for us to carve that part of our lives out entirely and pretend that if it never was, it could never be again, it never happened to begin with, and therefore I can't feel it.  We start by flipping this switch inside, shutting off any positive feeling that drags a painful memory behind it.

I say, "Go ahead, flip that switch".....I know it wasn't all bad.  It doesn't change what I know.

When one says "I'm better without them", the other knows "I'm better because of them."
When one says "I deserved better", the other thinks "I wish my best was better."
When one says "I can't believe I stayed so long", the other one simply says "Not long enough".
When one says "I don't need them!", the other knows "I wouldn't have wanted to do it with anyone else."

Go ahead, flip that switch.

To viciously tear out a previous chapter in this novel of our life because it didn't end how we had hoped, seems....well.... foolish to me.  That chapter will just be a part of my life - full of drama, humor, happiness, sadness, disappointments, regret, pain and love.  A lot of love.

That chapter is over, and though it's not worth re-reading, it will always be a part of the story.  Again, it's over. But the rest of the story is just beginning....turn the page.