February 18, 2017 7:18am

She has consumed my every thought, my every desire, my every dream at night. I feel inescapable in her grasp. I can feel the cracks in my armor growing longer, wider, deeper and I can no longer support the weight of it on my shoulders. I once thought myself so strong in the face of it all that I refused to break or bend and I left. I now feel weaker than I have for months and the sinking feeling in my chest grows as more and more frigid water fills the echo chambers with a resounding silence permeating every fiber of my body and mind. I never lied and expected myself to simply forget, accept the situation, and move on as if it...as if she meant...means nothing to me. She meant the world. I gave my every cell to her and let her love consume it all, ruthlessly and without remorse. I poured every ounce of my heart, my love, my sanity into that relationship because I wanted nothing else in my life. I wanted the life we built to stand as a testament, a monolith, a beautiful monument to all we had struggled through and accomplished despite it all.

I never expected it to destroy me. I never expected her to leave me as if I meant nothing to her. I never expected to find myself dreaming and imagining the life she has built without me because I cannot face the reality of confronting and seeing the reality for myself. I never thought I would give my all to someone so entirely, so completely that I would have nothing left for myself. I never even considered the fact that she held the power to shatter my entire world and leave it behind as if it never mattered. Never did I pause to consider that giving her happiness would mean leaving it all behind and destroying myself in the process. I surely never thought that my love for her would leave me so hollow, so gutted, so wrecked that I truly and completely lost the will to live in this world without her by my side.

Long ago I had stopped picturing a life without her because I never considered losing her. We had it all and we let it all slip away, little by little, one inconsideration and fight at a time, until we had nothing left. We both made mistakes. We both made short-sighted, bad decisions. We both hurt each other out of pain and anger. We both broke.

Now, I find myself sitting alone in a dark corner, in a dark period of life, with so many opportunities within my grasp that I never imagined possible. In six months I have left behind a life I cherished and valued so deeply while taking every facet of it for granted and advantage of it all. I have rebuilt myself from the ground up, leaving anything behind that did not promote healthy living and a purposeful existence. I looked at her, talked to her, and told her I loved her for the last time. I told her goodbye and that I would never again look for her, never again chase her, never again...never again...

I find myself with my every thought, my every dream, my every desire consumed by her with such guile and swiftness that I do not know where my mind rests because I can no longer find rest. She sinks the hollow of my chest until I have nothing left. My daydreams circle the drain of memories of touching her face to wipe away the tears of pains I never knew, holding her close at night, hand-in-hand, pulling each other tightly, watching her sleep across my lap in the same blood-covered scrubs she worked in all day long and knowing I had the world at my fingertips.

I sit with the decisions I made to let it all go because I no longer knew what I wanted from this life, in this life. I became lost in my own mind, indecisiveness, and isolation. I saw everything I had ever wanted right before my eyes, held the world in my hand, and knew I simply had to make the smallest effort to reach out and take it all. Everything sat before my feet, before my hands, before my eyes, and I walked away thinking I deserved better from myself, from my love, from the world...without working for any of it. I felt I deserved it. I no longer felt I had earned anything. I no longer worked for it, no longer strove to make something out of nothing, no longer saw the value of all that we had paid and sacrificed to reach the crossroads where we stood, across from each other, unable to reach each other any longer.

I gave up. I felt no will to pay the price. I cowered before the cost of admission and buckled beneath the weight of submission. I now find myself the broken man, homeless and heartless.