#pastregrets

I rebuke and renounce thee, old love from my past. I renounce and rebuke thee, old failed love. I renounce to the memory of your smile, the touch of your hands, the sound of your laugh, the genuine look in your eyes and all that made your presence a necessity to me.

I have loved, irrevocably, unconditionally, entirely, wholeheartedly. With every particle of my body and every fiber of my being I have loved, with no reserve, no restraint, no doubt, no reason. I have endured with serenity, patience, silence and resilience. I have loved passionately.

I believe that a love of this caliber and this intensity comes with a price. For I had given my soul away, made a deal for my heart and given it away with no remorse, no fear. I have given myself away and I am now feeling lost, afflicted, incomplete. The price had been to lose you and subsequently to lose my soul, my head, my heart.

I want to think that it had been easy, effortless to give myself away. A connection like ours could not be fake, fabricated, illusory. I could only be authentic, genuine, and real. So I gave myself away, to your body, your soul, your mind; I gave myself to you.  

I think about the journey, the road travelled to get to you and ultimately to losing you. I want to think and to say that it had been easy but I know that it had not. It had taken courage, perseverance, from my part and especially from yours to get to that point of complete bliss and happiness. I know I made you work, plead, beg for it, for me, for the chance to be with me, to know me, to love me. It had taken phone calls, emails, texts. It had taken dates, conversations, late night whispers. It had taken unspoken words, complicit smiles, the touch of your hand. It had taken lingering kisses, passionate embraces and powerful love making. It had taken so much to get us to that point but had it? I was yours, completely and the worst part of it is I don’t know when it happened. It only took that long because I was frightened, terrified, afraid. I was scared to let you in, scared of this foreign feeling of complete surrender that you inspired in me, scared of the loss of control that it might generate. It was oftentimes too much, too much for just two people to share. I don’t know how I became that person whose life revolved, centered around you. I just knew that it felt so right.

I recognize that I had given you my body, my heart, my soul. They were all mine to give and I gave them all, without hesitation because it was you. Do you understand? How it had been you, only and always you? This love could not be a figment of my imagination, this feeling could not just be endorphins running rampant in my brain, this connection could not just be due to circumstance. Lord knows I fought this feeling, afraid of what it meant, afraid that it would be too much, afraid that I wouldn’t be able to properly handle it, afraid that I would get hurt. But fear was not powerful enough to hold me back; you and I, what we felt was too majestic for me to ignore, too resplendent for me to hide from it, too magnificent for me to be hesitant. It was you, and you were mine. You were mine and I was yours and it was natural for me to be.

I had loved you. As you had loved me and regardless of my misgivings or hesitations I knew, I know that you loved me too. I know that my heart resonated in yours; I know that you needed me just as I much as I needed you. I know that we shared a heart, that your breath echoed mine. I had loved you. And you had loved me. And we had built a world just for us; a world of early morning, mid-afternoon, evening, late night conversations. We had created a world filled with music, movies, books, art, all for us, all by us. We had built love, the best way we could, to the best of our abilities and it was grand, it was beautiful and it was enough for us. We had wandered streets, visited places, walked on this port that still haunts my dreams. I had jumped at every opportunity to be with you, to be in your presence, to be with you, my man. Our love making had been transcendent, poetic, otherworldly while still maintaining its playfulness, curiosity, lightheartedness. It had been so easy to laugh with you, to cry with you, to be with you, to watch you sleep, to wake up next to you, to be the first person you laid eyes when you awoke. You had been all, you had been everything.

But I rebuke thee and renounce thee; I renounce those memories and what they now represent. I renounce the feeling of utter failure, resentment and sadness that they now generate upon recollection. Because you are no longer here, you are no longer with me. To have loved so much, so entirely, so completely…for nothing….

You had been here, with me. And then you were not , you were no longer there. It had been too quick, too swift, too prompt. I still struggle with it; I still try to find ways to come with terms with this ending. It had been nonsensical, absurd, asinine.  How do you get someone out of your veins? How do you deal with the feeling of utter despair, desolation, misery? How do you live outside of someone who had been your all? How do you regain composure when it had been so easy and freeing to lose control and be so in love so completely? It felt like a cruel joke, like waking up from a wonderful dream to the brutal and merciless reality. Because it felt so unnatural, abnormal, strange; being with you had felt so normal, being without you had felt so wrong.

But I rebuke thee. I rebuke the memories of this love now lost. I renounce to the memories of this incredible love. I am on the fence on what its meaning, role was in my life. How can a love so pure could not be lifelong? Its very essence should have equaled forever. It is that simple and that complicated; this should have been forever. This intense love should not have been momentary.

This has been the hardest thing; wrapping my mind around this incredible occurrence falling within the normalcy of day to day life and the statistics of failed relationships. This love had been too unique, exceptional to fall within the common rule rather than being the exception. This angers me so much. Because it had all ended; the late night whispers, complicit smiles, hands holding, beautiful embraces, powerful lovemaking. It had all ended and all I was left with were the memories. I fought so much, you fought so much; why had it not work? How could a love like this end so stupidly? How could I have been so stupid? How could you have been so stubborn? How could we have taken each other for granted? How could I have lost you when you were mine, when I was yours?

But I rebuke thee. I rebuke and renounce to the anger I now feel. I renounce to the feeling of hopelessness and helplessness that now fills my heart. I renounce to sleepless nights, to replaying this constantly in my mind, to obsessing about every single detail. They say that regretting is like spending your whole life having the same nightmare. My life after you has been a constant nightmare; dreadful, terrible, paralyzing, terrifying. I have gone through life lost, detached, at times convinced that I am a fraud, that I am living a life that is not my own, a life foreign, strange, unknown to me because you are no longer in it. It had been you and without you I had been lost. I have been in denial for so long, unwilling to accept the end. You had been resistant, unwilling to walk away. We had held on to each other, pushing, insisting, fighting to repair the unrepairable, the unfixable. We had been disinclined to walk away from this love; giving up had felt like suicide, like death. So we held on, hanging on from a cliff, holding on to one another; this could not end, not like this. This could not end, period.

But it had and all the pleas, prayers, compromises did not amount to much. It had ended, slowly but surely, as our love turned to resentment, anger, and – dare I say it – hatred.  I resented you for no longer letting me in, for giving up, for no longer trying. I resented you for letting go while I still held on, while I still needed you, while I still could not breathe without you, while I still could not live without you. Did you even know how much I needed you? Do you even know how much I needed you? I could not comprehend, could not understand how and why you had given up on this love, on this feeling, on me, on us. Didn’t you feel the same way I did? Didn’t you feel like you were dying? Resentment had settled in, anger filled my heart and the need for revenge had crept in. I was not proud, am not proud of it but I wanted to get even. I had wanted to hurt you, taking solace in the idea that it was just pay back. The good book does say an eye for an eye, and I took it further; a heart for a heart, your heart for my heart, your suffering for my suffering, your tears for my tears.  I may have not realized that it was my motivation back then but now, with the time that had passed, the growth that had occurred, I can admit it, own up to it. And this need for revenge had been combined with a need to somehow protect you, shield you. You were my love, you were my all; I had to protect you, guard you, shelter you in the midst of it all. Your happiness had been the priority to me; somehow I was hell bent on finding, in all these hatred I felt, a way to defend you, heal you, from it all, heal you from me, from the hurt that I was inflicting. Do you know how messed up it was? How messed up it still is? Loving you has been the most complex, complicated, convoluted thing I have ever done and ever will do. It had been too much, I had needed you too much, I had been too scared of losing you (rightfully so), too obsessed with reconquering you, and to hurt to properly walk away from you. How have I been with you? Why have I been that way? How did I become this person who simultaneously loved and resented you? How did I lose myself?

I rebuke and renounce thee and these memories. This exorcism has dragged along for way too long, these demons of memories hindering my wellbeing. I know that I am well, okay, thriving even. But somehow, in all of this, I have lost parts of myself, essential, necessary, crucial parts of what had made me who I am, who I once was when you and I were one. I have gone through life guarding myself, being cautious, prudent, careful. No more have I felt the burning and yearning that loving you had provoked in me. No more have I felt the feeling of hopelessness, complete dependence that I lived by when you were my lover. Perhaps am I cold, hard, sarcastic now. Perhaps I have become someone you could never be with. Perhaps I am exactly where I am supposed to be and I do believe that I am exactly where I am meant to be and I take great comfort in that fact, although it seldom makes sense to me. But I go back, to that moment in time; like the song says somewhere in time still belongs to us and I take frequent trips back to that time, rehashing everything, making sense of it all or trying and failing to make sense of it all. I have reached out to you after it all happened and we have made peace it seems but our relationship had been damaged irrevocably, irreversibly, permanently. Because, you too have become guarded, prudent, careful. I had hurt you just as much as you had hurt me (during my bad days I believe I have hurt you more) and I understand that you can never let me in again. And it is ok, it is a price that I believe I have to pay and it is just as well; perhaps if you had let me in, I would have settled inside you, inside your heart again. I would have found my old spot and would have settled there, comfortably, securely, happily and by God I would not have gone away this time.

Perhaps this should not be an exorcism. Rather, this should be a plea for forgiveness; to you, who I have loved so much, needed so much, wanted so much. For having been everything, for having done everything; for having been the best and the worst. The person I am now can only beg for forgiveness. The woman I am now can only pray for mercy. I can only appeal to your sensibility, to the person you were once and ask for clemency. Perhaps if you forgive me then these memories will go away. Perhaps if you understand then the guilt will be but a memory. Perhaps if you exonerate me then I will be able to truly move on.

I can only sincerely hope, from the bottom of my heart, from the pit of my soul, I can only wish and hope that you were able to be happy. I can only hope that you have found all that you have always wanted. I spend times reminiscing, remembering, memorizing these long conversations when you would tell me all of your hopes and dreams. And I remember, hanging on to your every word, wishing and hoping beyond reason that I could make them all come true, just to see that smile of yours; I had wanted to move mountains and seas to make these dreams of yours come true because they had always included me somehow. I can only hope that you have become the man you always wanted to be. I can only hope you have become the man I always thought you could be; the man that I pictured myself growing with, living with, loving for as long as I lived. The man with whom I had been so passionately, so overwhelmingly, so irrevocably in love with. The man I had lost myself to, this man I had given myself to so completely. I hope you are happy. And I ask for forgiveness.

Or perhaps it is not your forgiveness that I should seek. Perhaps above it all, what I need to do is to beg, plead, implore for forgiveness to myself. To this person I once was. This person who had loved so completely, so wonderfully, so foolishly. To this person who had given all, without reason or sanity. I do need to ask this girl for forgiveness. This girl that I somehow lost and that I know I will never get back. This girl that I abandoned for you; this girl that I left behind with you. I had given myself up; I had given her up to you freely but she is not yours to keep. She belongs to me and I surrendered her to you. I need to ask her for forgiveness, clemency, mercy. I would have loved to have her back, I am confident that she would have learned greatly from the experience, wisdom, shrewdness of my new self. And had she learned this, maybe she would not have let you go. Or maybe she would have, but with no regrets or guilt. She is imprisoned with you and I don’t think you know that she is. If you do know, if you do realize that she’s still here, when her voice hits you in the strangest places, when her whispers keep you up at night, when her gaze prohibits you from forming any type of long lasting and real attachment to anyone, when you realize that she is haunting you. I want to think that she is not aggressive; I believe that she is next to you, there, unbeknownst to you as you go along in a life that she had so desperately wanted to be a part of. She is quiet ghost, a reflection of the girl you knew, the girl you loved, the girl who had only wanted to be with you, the girl who loved your company, the girl who latched on to you. If you do realize that she’s with you, do not perform an exorcism, do not cast her out like an evil spirit. All she had ever wanted was your love; all she had ever wanted was love. All she had ever wanted was my love. She had wanted me to appreciate her spirit, he warmth, her strength and her naivety. Had she been with me now, perhaps I would have been better grounded; perhaps I would have been less of a robot, less shrewd, less cold, less distant, less me. Perhaps, just perhaps, I would have been able to give her just a tiny bit of the love that I had given to you.

Tell her that I think I love her now; I am learning to love her every day, despite her mistakes, despite her naivety, despite her screw ups. Perhaps one day I’ll love her enough; perhaps that day she’ll finally leave you and return to me. Perhaps you will no longer be haunted, perhaps you are not haunted. If it’s the latter, I can genuinely be happy for you. This haunting is scarier and more paralyzing then any horror movie. I am haunted and I need to no longer be. So tell her for me, will you? Tell her that she can pass on; her unfinished business can only be completed with me. Tell her, please. The good book does say an eye for an eye; a ghost for a ghost, my ghost for your ghost. Let’s make it a trade, a hostage negotiation. So give my ghost back to me … then I’ll return yours to you.