The Only Thing Worth Fighting For

I don't know how to leave here. I don't know how to leave her. I don't want to admit failure. I don't want to start again, even though I know they all must come to pass. At some point I will have to leave. Either way I will be distant from someone or something. What is the right thing? That's what I think he would say if I asked him what to do. Most of the time, when I try to think of how he would respond to me I feel as if I don't really know him, and therefore, a part of myself, because I can't divine the answer to my own question. That frustrates me so much. Reminds me of all that was left unsaid. Undone. Regret and guilt meld together and now I have this morose, acidic anger always at critical mass, ready to boil over at any moment, but never spilling over the brim. Like the pour of a pretty, privy cicerone. I feel disingenuous saying the word cicerone because it feels like even beer wouldn't want itself all classed up with a word like that. Like Pabst Blue Ribbon as a person would hear that word and be like, "I dunno what the fuck cicerone is, but you can keep that shit off my pizza, chicken fucker. These colors don't run." Pardon that interruption, we now return you to your scheduled programming. I have to stop leaving words on the edge of my teeth, or one day they're gonna fucking choke me. I wonder a lot, as I assume for my own sanity that most people do, what would've been different; how I would've been different had I said what I wanted to, but didn't. I make excuses for myself about my father. I say things like, "Well, you couldn't have known what was going to happen.", or "It was his fault anyways, he was a self-righteous, old bastard!". Sometimes, people conveniently make up excuses for me ranging from, but not limited to, "He was sick", "You did all you could", all the way to my favorite, "Fuck him". Those make me feel better. Almost like some emotional pressure relief valve I can ease open and close when I start getting too comatose. I know they have no real impact, but when things get so crazy and all your priorities seem to be of equal importance, but they're all also in need of immediate attention, and all you can do is sit there shrunken and bent, and to any observer it would be impossible not to know from your posture that this ship is sunk. Its at those moments where you bring in these little phrases, parade them in front of the back of your eyeballs like flight attendants demonstrating to your brain how to use a flotation device. Really, the true function these words serve is to get you from one day to the next. But with her. I don't have that luxury.

I stare down the facts of how I got here, without her. There is no grey area, there are no comforting excuses when it comes to how I lost her. I was afraid. I was a coward. I denied the most basic part of life: This train does not stop. I saw her and I saw the rest of my life taking shape and all the sudden it felt like time was pressing up around my face like cellophane. All the sudden that clock started ticking in my head and that leisurely pace I was accustomed to turned into a dead sprint. I used what I did to her against her. I blamed her anxious, clingy behavior for my distance and irritability, but really I was suffused by guilt and anger at myself. I couldn't accept what I had done and so I pushed her away as if to get away from the projected source of my shame. The fact that I could hurt someone so deeply, and still have that person never turn away from me, never stop loving me, but move closer to me because perhaps some part of her knew exactly what I was trying to do and refused to let it happen. Like she know exactly what I was thinking and wanted to save me from it, to make me believe I was wrong. As if she believed in us so much that she knew this was just one obstacle in the way of forever. Somehow, feeling that kind of love just twisted the knife. It made everything ten times worse and I could not bear the idea that she deserved so much better from me, that I owed her so much more and not even for that love, but for giving me a part of who I am; for shining a light in my life. For making everything seem worthwhile. Now, my life is stained by the interests of her heart. She loved me so much and some part of me genuinely hates everything I am because that love for me ended up hurting her. I took all that and I threw it away because I was afraid. I had lost myself. I rationalized that the right thing to do was to leave her behind. That I wasn't the one who was going to make her the happiest she could be and therefore I had to let her go. A part of me still really does believe this and its that part that is still with me, that originally drove me to leave her and this place behind. Leaving you is the single worst regret of my life thus far.

Speaking of words unspoken, I should've told you how much I loved you everyday. I should've shown it at every possible opportunity. I wish I would've held you closer all the time. Kissed you every time I saw you. I wish more than anything, so goddamn much it hollows me out, that I could go back and dance in the kitchen with you. That we could lay dinner out on my table, put some music on and sip beer while we laughed and sang and talked. Then I would've washed the dishes while you opened a cheap bottle of wine and we'd lay on the couch at opposite ends and rub each others feet while we watched terrible scary movies. I remember looking at you. Just simply looking at each other. Its like there is fucking hours of footage stored in my brain of your face with all the seasons behind it. Your eyes held me like nothing else ever could. Fuck, You could've killed me without me even noticing and I'd still be smiling at you as I bled out all over my lobster mac and cheese. I just want to see your eyes and know that's love there inside them one more time. Perhaps that is the tag line of every love story, but all those producers and poets can't be wrong. It is that love that keeps me here when I probably should've been long gone. It is that selfish burnt out ember of hope that I cling to as I tick away the days and postpone and rearrange, all to suit my denial of what has happened. My life, the one I denied, was over as I knew it. That world has ended and I am still not ready to face it. These problems don't go away overnight; some don't go away at all, but you have to find some kind of motivation, some sort of half-lie you tell yourself so that you can get up and face the day in some productive fashion. The fact that I know I have it better than most is not always enough. It might come off as suspiciously selfless, but I have to say, most of the time its not even my own interests that keep me coming back. That's my problem in a nutshell. All the things that motivate me, maybe not the things that wake me up, but the things that make me roll out of bed, are people. I love too many of them. People whose lives I care about more than my own. People who I have to know are taken care of and safe and loved. People whom for all I want is to just to be a part of their memories. Most of them are far away from me, some are gone away from me, or have been left behind by me. I don't know which of them hurts the least, but I can tell you, its the latter that hurts the worst.

So....What is the right thing? In the five years since his death, that is the one thing I'm sure of about my father. That he would want me to do what is right and that is what I must ask myself always. Still, it is not as simple as answering one overarching question that solves all my ills. There are so many subsets. What is the right thing for me? what is the right thing for my family? What is the right thing for all our futures? Am I a fucking alcoholic, neurotic asshole? At the end of all that, there is still this overpowering need to stay right here and do nothing, but wait. That is what my heart wants. It doesn't want a career, or money, or to travel. All it wants right now is to remain here and wait for her. Right up to the bitter fucking end of it. I told myself when I came back, I cannot leave, until there's a ring on her finger, mine, or otherwise. That's it, that's the end of it. There is nothing I can do; no sensible way I can reason with anybody other than myself as to why I can't leave this place. She is gone away from me, but I still can't give up. I couldn't give up five years ago when we knew all was lost and I refuse to give up now. I feel like there are a few things in this world that you just have to draw a line and never cross it for fear of losing yourself and that is one of mine. You never, ever, give up. Especially on love.