There is no space between knowing and not knowing. No purgatory, no suspended moment of truth.
There is only before and after.
A moment between would offer solace, comfort, a time to take a breath, but that moment would be a false reality.
Reality is made up of the seconds where things are different than they ever were, or will be again.
Words, once said, can never be fully erased.
They hang in the air between you, sometimes sparkling like jewels to be treasured… sometimes creating a black hole, absorbing all of who you are at that very moment, any joy, any laughter, any warmth, any any any any.
At that moment, and for a very long time after, the black is endless.
How is it that losing love truly makes your body hurt?
That the space right above your heart alternates between a dull ache and searing pain, depending on which memory is brightest at any given time. Which vision of the one you loved fills the space around you, before slipping into the cracks between the floor boards into the pool of darkness below, lost forever.
No matter the very real hurt, that pain is better than the hollowed out core of nothingness. When the shell of you goes through the motions of each day, managing to focus just enough on work or children or pets or driving or anything else you can’t ignore to convince yourself and everyone else you are still alive. Barely breathing, slogging through quicksand, step after step threatening to steal your shoes from your feet the same way the one you loved sank your heart into oblivion.
Love is impossible to capture, to pin down even for a moment or two. It shifts shape, and size, and cadence, and strength. Never the same for two people at once, always a dance to unheard music.
No matter how many hours you practice you will never master love for anyone else. Only yourself, if you’re lucky.
On the rare occasions two people are feeling, sensing, knowing the same music, it is a glorious concert of joy and excitement and exploration and giving and taking and trust and support.
The notes soar to the ceiling as you cook dinner together, alight on the couch where you share your deepest darkest secrets, tickle the laughter out between the silliness and the playfulness, and then cover you as softly and as thickly as a down comforter as you drift off to sleep in each other’s arms, dreaming of more days to come just like this one.
But the notes eventually fade, and the concert comes to an end.
As the years go by the world of after makes it harder and harder to open each door of before. The frame is warped, the door sticks, the handle is slippery with thousands of tears and nearly rusted shut.
But… love is what makes life worth living.
Eventually we turn the handle, again, open the door, even just a crack to slip through sideways, and walk through to the other side.
And we keep walking, until someday, we hear the notes once again.
