What is it in me that drives me to wander the empty ether on a Friday night, bereft of companionship? Why is it that I torture my mind with “could’ve beens”? Or worse yet, things that couldn’t’ve possibly ever happened, they were just thin, dry yearnings escaping from the cracks in my soul, as impossible then as they are now.

How can something so innocent become so ill-begotten? How can something so pure in spirit send my soul writhing in existential turmoil, knowing until the end of my life that there’s nothing that could’ve saved me, that this is how things were going to turn out, and my soul is left flapping in the breeze of the timestream, like some tattered white flag, ill-used and forgotten.

I don’t know why this one thing, this thing that never happened, this thing that could never be, I just don’t know why it left my soul all crushed and shattered. Oh, yes, the cracks were already there, big gaping cracks, the impact crater that was N’s betrayal, and the bleak, dark aftermath of me trying to scrape the liquified remnants of my heart from the asphalt. I should be glad that I survived that awful darkness, the days and the nights I lay unmoving in bed, staring dully at the ceiling, hoping against all hope that God would just strike me down and so end my torment. Somehow, I rallied against that, and fought my way to the sunlight, in fits and starts, with as many stumbles as triumphs.

I gazed upon her beauty as I clawed my way to the light.

And I can’t help but feel that that’s what broke me beyond all redemption. Without any malice, indeed, with nothing but pure friendship in her heart, my soul was condemned to perpetual torment.

I suppose the right question is: was there any chance that I might not have fallen in love with her? Looking back on the thousands of memories, with me in the periphery completely hopeless, with the light shining on her face, with the wind scattering her raven black hair, I feel it like a dagger inching its way into my chest, and for the life of me, I can’t let it go. It’s as if I were impaled with a sword piercing my major arteries, cold steel the only thing tamponading the impending hemorrhage. Without this exquisite pain, I would long ago have exsanguinated, my life unlived, my soul scattered into oblivion. And yet every single breath is a torturous reminder of what I can’t possibly have.

How can someone give you so much hope and at the same time take all hope away?

And maybe that is the way to think of it: if I never loved her, what would my life be like? Would this howling emptiness be silenced? Would this gaping hole be shut?

Is there such a thing as too late? I’m not thinking of anything impossible, just wondering if it is possible, after all these years, to actually start healing, to try and close this vast rupture in the fabric of my soul, to just try and live.

Or is this just asking for yet one more impossible thing?