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diaryland

Accept Loss Forever

21 February 2019 - 17:13

<<--unravel * reintegrate-->>

I have been away: lived on the other side of the continent, taken on a new perspective of my life.

I have been in mourning. And on and on. Of the three people closest to me from 1999-2013: two dead, one estranged. We exist as reflections in the eyes of those who love us; we lose ourselves when the light of those eyes fades from view.

More than just myself, though, I lost the magic. The feeling that love is underneath everything. The feeling of a safe and nourishing universe. Beauty stopped overwhelming me; beauty started feeling remote, superfluous. Looking for rainbows and silver linings became naive and insensitive. I aged and faded - silver hair, tired eyes, softening jawline.

I began this diary in 2001, two years after my heart was broken for the first time, with the now-erased words "Accept loss forever." They feel fitting again.

And yet...

A couple nights ago I was thinking about the most important relationships in my life, and I realized none of them have ended. Becky has died, for example (and nearly two years on, I still can't wrap my mind around it), but my relationship with her lives on. Everything I do without her, every place that used to be ours that I pass through, the emptiness, the memories, each mental recreation of her voice, her face, her hands, each stab of horror and pang of loss, continues the story of our love for each other. It's not the story we wanted, but it's the one we have, and it comes wholly from us and who we are and the things we embraced and resisted about each other.

It isn't enough (but was anything, ever?) and it doesn't stop the pain (did anything?).

*

WILL GRAHAM
I prayed I would see Abigail again.

HANNIBAL
Your prayer did not go entirely unanswered. You saw part of her.
*

*[Referring, of course, to the body part he used to frame Will for her murder]

<<--unravel * reintegrate-->>