Loosing Heartstrings

 At twenty-one minutes to midnight, my phone said, "Annessa, We're over."  I couldn't breathe, and I felt my heart stop.  My heart hasn't beat the same in the days since.  Like a country song, it hurts to breathe.  A handful of messages later, after I begged, he called in the cruelty of it all.  

Our lives have been playing like a video reel in my mind, and us laughing for no reason while we rolled through yellow lights touching his Jeep's ceiling, driving down from Denver as darkness covered and snow fell. We wondered how anyone in Colorado got out of their driveways alive; we joked they probably weren't from there anyway. Our dogs carry beef rolls in the yard like cigars. Him popping out his elbow for me to take his arm as we walked down streets, across parking lots, or nearly anywhere. Him picking me up at the airport nervous, him picking me up at the airport and wrapping his arms around me to say, "welcome home." Our seemingly endless days and nights in the backyard with the fire are little solaces.  As we walked a decline while hiking, he reached his hand back to take mine and ensured I was safe.  Safe. 

He felt like home to me.  There've been very few relationships, and of my three major ones, he was the only one to feel like home.  I've long had insomnia, and it eases and breaks with him.  Now, it's in overdrive.  For months I've awoken in the night to reach for him when we aren't together.  Bourbon won't sleep in his old spot on the bed anymore and hasn't since March.  Now, Bourbon walks on me and curls into me, still leaving half the bed open for a man no longer there, and I wake up to remember it is over through designs, not my own.  I lay awake again.  I wonder when the pain will stop.  

I wondered what the power of loving again meant as I prepared to change life's direction willingly and whole-heartedly.  I'm in the middle of a five-year plan, and I've long said I was going back West or to Europe.  I thought the plan solidified with West my direction to the man I love with the ease of breathing and refreshment of a deep slumber.  He'd awoken me from years of frozen, stationary, and dysfunctional relationships.  During the shutdown, he tried reaching out, and I kept him at bay.  A year later and my frozen walls were melting.  Now I wonder what is the point of loving again when I'm still the lone man left at the plate.  No one tells you what to do when the rug is pulled out from beneath you and you're blindsided with such force that the air leaves the room.  When he changes his mind, without warning, there is no guidebook.  

Dancing in his kitchen while cooking one night, sitting with my head on his shoulder and his resting on mine while reading from our phones, conversing on things that were irking us, learning to communicate with a partner when we'd both been alone for so long, trusting said partner, and making plans for home products, a camper, and a weekend excursion do not escape me now. He kept the world at bay for me, as comliexities of work and life had ebbeded away at me, and I thought we were good at leaning in on each other like partners do. We had our faults, as all do.  Yet, I thought we far outweighed the negative; good had won, or so I falsely thought. Falling asleep with my head on his lap while we watched television seem like a romantic fever dream.  I'm left gasping for air.  

I didn't mention him ignoring my birthday since mine are usually best spent isolated anyway.  I knew my birthday would always be on me, and I'd make my plans alone.  He wouldn't come to NY, as work played a hand.  I understood.  Miscommunications as we learned each other's quirks,  but raging fights of movie scenes never happened.  We had a couple of busy weeks, with my plan of us settling into our chats and calls this week dying unexpectedly.  I'd said as much, that we just had a busy two weeks ahead.  As lovers do, even in the same house, days can pass where they will not.  Then, the forces of tides calm and life settles back into the rythmns of comfort and connection.  In that parting call, he said he didn't want to worry about me because of the added stress from work.  I couldn't speak.   No one tells you what to do when loving him becomes his burden.    

I'm told I love too fiercely.  

So many decisions I had been making with him in mind, as we'd been consulting each other on most things for months.  Or at least I thought.  I thought he meant his promise to have a conversation if either of us needed to slow down, take a break, or reevaluate us.  Somehow, unbeknownst to me, we ended up on a trajectory to get married.  I had thought we were planning to live our lives together, and when he had brought up marriage--two seasons back--it was in the abstract sense.  I never thought it was something we were thinking about for the here and now, this year--calendar or figurative--and when he said he didn't want that with me I couldn't breathe.  I never wanted to be the girl sitting here wondering how it all ended.  I didn't think it would.  I'm not one to bring up marriage.  

I just don't know how to not be his girl anymore.  A year and change later, I don't know where I'm supposed to be. 

Dreams undone.  An unrequested dream.  Things left undone.  Pictures sit on a shelf, as my heart remains locked two hours behind.