Broken Silence
There was a time when I could tell her anything, say anything to her, without fear or worry that she'd reject me or my ideas out of hand.
Then things fell apart. We fell apart and finally landed in the disparate realities we'd been building around ourselves to hide our hearts from the pain of the distance between them. The denial had gone on long enough, I supposed, as I sheepishly admitted defeat in a years-long war of attrition. We'd been as stubborn as humanly possible, and we'd outlasted most of the anecdotes I'd heard about similar situations. Five years! When I think of all the shared experience that we failed to have together over that half decade, it pains me.
Once a love swings out of rhythm, it's hard to get it back to the way it was. It's very much like burning your hand in a fire, where the only intelligent response is to pull away and avoid ever repeating the act.
It was the silence that followed the breakup that really damaged us. A further cycle of denial and acceptance that I waded through with a stoic resolve, thinking that at some point I'd just forget. Just forget all the good times, all the laughter, all the love. In the end it was that childish refusal to get over things that truly broke my heart. And hers, if I'm afforded any sympathy after all the pain and suffering I put us through. But I might never know, for now that I'm in a position to talk to her again I can't put the words together in the ways that I used to. There's fear there now; fear that I'll say the wrong thing and offend, and she'll close the door forever. So instead I stand just outside of it, like a stupid adolescent who still has yet to muster the courage to speak with true passion to the one they desire.
Forever romantic. Forever lost. And now, a broken toy.
First draft: 140713
Published: 230314