It’s a slow process this falling apart business. It creeps up on you until one day you’re looking at this person you thought you knew and you’re wondering if you really do.
Love; it was so strong in you in the beginning. You used to want to stay up all night or jump out of bed first thing in the morning. Because you had that love you had the world.
Everything was easier at first but you probably took it for granted, didn’t realise that one day the love would fade. And even now you may not have realised that the love is almost gone. You might just keep going, in automatic, just keep going because life has a kind of inertia and you get sucked along without even thinking about the old times and how you once felt.
But then it hits you one day. You get out of bed one morning and this other person is there looking at you and you don’t want to look at them, you grumble and leave the room. Or someone hands you a photo of that person and you can’t look at it for all the disappointment that you feel.
Then you lie awake at night comparing your life to the life of others, wondering how they got so lucky while you’re stuck in this terrible situation that you can’t seem to get out of. You lie there angry at the world for not giving you what you had always hoped for.
Maybe you half-heartedly try and patch things up, you try to talk about things, make compromises, try and see things in a new light. But none of it works because when the love is gone it’s gone and you have to want the love and maybe you don’t want it anymore.
Maybe you just want to be on your own for awhile, hide yourself away from the world.
But maybe you don’t.
Maybe what you want to do is next time you get up in the morning and you see that other person, maybe what you want to do is fix them in the eye and say:
“You’re my best hope for me ever living the life I want. You understand me better than anyone else and I love you”.
And maybe if you do that enough that person in the mirror will not be the other – they will be you.
I hope so.