Loss and Absence
I write a lot about loss and absence which is funny because so much of that loss is self-imposed.
I can be a cold bastard, sometimes. I grew up being shown that love was a chain wrapped tight around my throat. If I broke the rules, it tightened and I choked. My love was to be unconditional. Their love only came at the end of the leash they kept me on. For awhile, it worked. I was a kid. I bought a lie on the pretense of love, and I did my best to play my part. Well, I did until I didn't.
When I left not much of love remained. Over the years, I rebuilt slowly and not always well. Even now, I love hard, but I drop people easily. The older I get, the less I forgive. There are very few sins in my world. I have no time for moralists or busybodies, but the boundaries I draw are absolute.
I don't even regret most of it. When I write about loss and absence, I am not writing about a person. I am writing about a possibility. I am mourning what might have been. I am mourning what I wanted to be.
And so I write, and the world moves on, and I think of what could have been in different place and time. Loves lost and friendships undone in the blink of an eye. We are all just trying to find our way. What we thought would last forever often crumbles and fades, or worse it remains the same as we grow beyond it. In either case, what was can never be what will be.
Nothing remains forever, but in every loss and in every absence there is an opportunity for something new. I find real hope in that. I always have.