Arise
If someone were to cut my heart out, in the crimson ventricles and minutiae of arteries, there would be names of those I love threaded in my very cells. Coming to terms with life made me realize this is both who I am and something I do to myself. To love with existence’s every waking moment is to live a life of disappointment.
Sometimes, I think I could be less heavy, less introspective, less everything, really. I wish I could take things as they are, allow the universe to simply exist and recover from the punches it throws.
But I don't think I recover. Rather I adapt, and my flesh is made tepidly whole over bumpy black scabs. Tear the skin only a little, and therein lies rot.
As I have aged foolishly in vanity, I once believed in a promise of love so ferocious and true that I could travel to the corners of the globe and it could still find me. It feels strange to finally admit this naïve wish. By saying this is what I want, I know I am not going to get it.
I just don’t think that’s how the world works.
Or at least that’s not how it works for me.
So, I’m proceeding with telling my tale because I think it’s time to release things deeply wound into my chest, muffled in romanticism and stifled with stupid expectations. There’s a calmness in letting go of hope. Hope is not really the thing with feathers, but something far more fleeting.
Maybe it’s foolish pride for a sinner like me, but I keep trying to remind myself that I really did try to be cautious around him. There was some residual doubt about him, here and there, never more evident than when he would parade proudly like a peacock in front of others for things I couldn’t have cared less about.
Then something would happen, mere hours in the grand scheme of life, moments that blurred my vision. When we were alone, it was like he immediately became someone else. As time decayed around us, I saw a child unfold into a man in those moments. When I close my eyes and pull those memories from the abyss, it feels like we held two halves of paper hearts together, with a name I can’t even write to this day, so many months after.
How silly was I - it’s cringeworthy and abysmal to admit that there’s a part of me that wanted to believe in a world filled with devotion and that someone might want to keep me close, and not let me go. Why on Earth did I think it would be him?
I think there is a power to exorcising confessions, to emancipate oneself from what’s creeping in inner corners. So here goes mine - I think John Proctor was right, a person can only have one name. In writing this all out, I deny him his. It’s the only blow left in my arsenal, the only cruelty I can manage. There was a time when that name felt like a lighthouse and hit like syrup and sugar in my mouth. But now I choke on the vowels and scream on the constants of his name, an eternity in each gulp of air that drowns me in my bed’s sweaty sheets.
To feel like I had found someone when I needed them the most was an incandescently powerful blessing and curse. I imagined my life as intertwined with a plan only the heavens know. But now that seems like the thought of a girl, isolated, who plays with nothing but dolls she controls yet thinks in fables and coincidences. Yet there’s this part of me that says despite the anguish, even knowing the ending now, it was like the universe was cut open for my understanding, and I finally understood what the fuss was about.
It’s maddening, how two inconsistent truths can coexist within the spirit. It’s stomach-twisting, how a name that once meant safety now feels like an allergic reaction.
Yet here I go again with this silly tale; I think I’m trying to justify my choices. For every torment, there were moments of Heaven. It wasn’t always so much pain. I remember placing my hand over his chest the day we had a picnic. It made me so full of love, I barely ate. We were just lying there together and I felt so at peace. The way he tasted was sweet and the way he kissed was sometimes painful. Through his lips and the roughness of his beard, he was always trying to tell me something I could never understand.
After everything fell astray, and thinking about how I could have done something better, this day stayed with me.
I think it was a dream, a steady beat that only exists in the melody of the ethereal sky.
I just don’t get to have moments like that.
I remember the moment I realized I loved him. It was a cloudy night, filled with miscommunication and another man trying to take me home at a bar we were at. But I only had heart for him, and when I saw him appear from the background, I felt safe.
Love came not as an emotion but as a thought - I would look for you if I never met you.
And it came not with a stir but a shock to the system that frightened me - And if you were crashing and burning, I would find you.
There was another night, both beautiful and terrible, a secret for only us to share. But I gush lovingly at this part. It was at about 2 am, and I had to explain to him that after a few months of dating, at her request, I gave my mother his cell phone number in case she couldn’t find me. I explained that she’d done this before, and she’d never called any man I’d ever dated because I stayed in regular contact with her. He didn’t need to worry that he was going to start having daily conversations with her.
“Put me in the nice dumpster after you kill me,” I said, bursting out laughing.
He thought I was going to get us kicked out of the hotel for laughing so hard. After a few minutes of nervous chatter, he told me, “I’m going to try to go to sleep now.”
“Was that a nice way of asking me to shut the hell up?” I asked and burst out laughing even harder.
As he fell asleep, I reached out to trace the outline of his face. He just felt so right, I wanted to savor the moment. Just for a little longer.
In such a later effort to destroy every memory of him, I’m glad this has stayed because the weight of him now is what I can feel. My love of him destroyed me daily as he experimented with drugs, mostly cocaine. My mind was on him, always, foolishly thinking if I could love him enough to stay he would want to stay in the present. I didn’t realize it until he was gone, and I was navigating a tepid water of relief and heartbreak. But living with the fear that a bad day was going to lead to a binge that would cause his beautiful heart to stop beating – it was killing me, very, very slowly.
Coupled with love, I think it was the most unbearable feeling I’ve ever experienced. I think that’s why my anger at God turned to disbelief. Hell is on Earth, among men, and Heaven is not pleasure, but simple peace. And we get there not through being saved, but by saving ourselves. The things that we do to each other, it’s unimaginable, to know such suffering exists. Because I knew him, I loved him. Because I loved him, I stayed in the darkness with him and suffered. And I think a true source of suffering was spending time wondering if he knew that his sobriety from the dangerous would alleviate my pain, and if he cared enough for himself to make those moves forward. He would talk a sweet game, of wanting to get away from things that would kill him, of moving some place where there were mountains, fresh air, freedom, and good whiskey. But I knew I could not want that future for him more than he wanted it for himself.
So it ended - most love stories do. And while I figured out how to come back, I was drowning in a clear feeling. I was so embarrassed. When friends asked why that was one of the first emotions that came to the surface, I had to share something I had done.
He doesn’t know this, but I kept a diary to him. There was so much I wanted to say to him during our months together but I knew I should just keep it to myself. Love, from my limited experience, is intense. It feels weird to vocalize, moments of doubt are abounding. There is also always a need for self-protection, but I could feel it after a few months together. This diary was how I kept myself from leaping out of my skin, of acting recklessly and passionately. The journal — probably half full, maybe 60 or so pages — is in the trash now, fodder for the Earth, hopefully devoured by the soil. It didn’t seem healthy to hold onto after everything had ended.
When he broke up with me, he wrote me five paragraphs. Sixty pages versus five paragraphs. When I think about that journal, and how much of myself I poured into it by contrast, I’m embarrassed of loving so deeply without clear reciprocation. His name earned a place in that roughly etched heart of mine, while I probably was no more than a ripple.
This kind of life is getting so old, but at least now I get the omens. Some things he said, here and there. He was trying to tell me he wasn’t ready to be loved by me alone. He was telling me that from the beginning. He was so terrified, like so many others, that he was never going to be free from monotony of life. He thrived on variety and excitement, and what could be less of an adventure to someone like that than commitment?
Life lessons are quite stale and I could do without the empty calories, but I’m starting to believe that a part of loving someone is saying, “I want you to help me if I’m lost. If I’m not physically here, look for me. And if I lose the thread of who I am, then help me find it again.”
But this can’t be asked of someone if they are lost themselves. Especially if they don’t want help to come back.
Life moved on, and I faced forward, yet steps inching forward became steps backward like some dosey do of the damned that only suckers do. There was even a time I thought I was feeling better, relaxed and opened myself to new possibilities, only to harshly reject someone with the phrase - I appreciate it but you’re just going to dump me over Facebook messenger in 8 months so let’s just not.
Pure, raw, unchecked bitterness sleeping inside me found a voice in that moment and I’m glad it did. I apologized to such an undeserving target, but I think I had to know the depth of the pain that was pulling me away from the person I want to be. Disappearing in plain sight has a strange way of giving space to reevaluate.
That feeling I used to have, that optimism in finding love in someone else, has shifted. I never experienced a broken heart, quite like the one he gave me. My meaning to him was summed up in five paragraphs. It took a devastating toll on my subconscious, each paragraph a stone in a pocket that sunk me further in the ocean. The arms of such alluring suffering made a monolith out of a man. Just one singular individual. Just a beating heart, like mine.
And that’s the redemption here. At the end of the day, I can look myself in the eye, even if it is sometimes with a heavy heart and red cheeks, ripened by the unlucky in love status. He gave me a sense of survival, knowing my love is boundless and deserving of the harbor I thought he was. And the love I so desperately sought does exist, just in perseverance of self-reliance. For now, I’ll be own refuge.
The Scriptures that I used to read daily but struggle to get through now talk about men and women who arise. Search for the word, it’s throughout the Bible - it’s a call to get up, because there is still work to be done. Most of all, it’s a call to wake-up, to spring up from slumber, come alive with purpose, and to move.
I thought that loving another would set my soul on fire and be why I moved, why I arose. What a strange blessing he gave me - because I loved him, lost him, was thrown away by him - I woke up.
Arise, the painfully linger of hope calls.
You are no man’s martyr.
Rachel M. Reis is a writer and photographer from Dallas, Texas. Her work has appeared in Ruminate Magazine, Fathom Magazine, Drunk Monkeys, and the Barely South Review. Her freelance photojournalism focuses on civic activism and protests. She has a Bachelor's in History from William Jewell College and a Master's in Public Administration from the University of Texas at Arlington.