My heart aches but I struggle to cry. I can’t fight against tears that refuse to stream down my face. Even my tears leave me alone and dry. I feel the pools well up at the bottom of my eyes and then nothing. Begging for a release that isn’t coming.
Just another broken connection. In this moment that is all I am. Not a lost love or friend but just a connection. I was once again just a box that sits on a shelf and was taken down when you wanted to play with me. Sure, you enjoyed that box very much. You may have found it delightful to your eyes and pleasurable to your touch. The depths of me you may have desired to see but it was never enough for you to keep me beside you. You always had your fill and then placed me gently back into that box and carefully placed me back onto your shelf.
I didn’t want anything from you. Not this time or the last. I wanted nothing but to be let out of that box. To tell me I was yours and allow me to sit beside you. I didn’t want your autonomy nor for you to take mine. I didn’t want to steal from you; only to add. To encourage and walk alongside you as two companions should.
I know that I am enough and that is why I walked away but in this moment these tears that won’t flow are filled with whispers “once again you were not enough.” And there it is, a tear. Grateful for the slightest relief. It tickles my cheek as it slowly slides down my skin. Walking away because I am so much more than a box can hold and yet these voices won’t leave me alone. They force the tears from my eyes as my breath becomes shallow and my throat begins to burn. Knowing the voices I hear inside my head spew lies but embracing them for allowing the tears to flow and the pain in my chest to take over so all I can think of is that pain and not of you.
I didn’t want anything from you, but I didn’t tell you that. You wouldn’t have believed me if I did. They never do. And the hard truth for me to face is that if I was special enough to you, you would have taken a chance. You would never have let me walk out that door and away from your embrace. You would have told me not to go and given me the chance to show you that I wanted to give and not take. You would have taken me out of that box and looked into me and seen that I was too precious to be kept in a box on a shelf. Because who keeps something so precious in a box!
So grateful for these tears that are finally flowing. I always move on and so I will once again. Still searching. Waiting for that one that will unwrap me and see that I am the one they wouldn’t ever close up in a box and leave on a shelf. That I am the one they will finally unwrap and allow to sit beside them.
And if that doesn’t happen in this lifetime then I will walk alone. It will hurt and I know it won’t fulfill me the way a companion would. But at least I will never again be locked away in a box, sitting on a shelf, only taken out for moments to be played with, just to be put away once again.
My mind tells me that these men just throw the box that is me out. They place me in the trash and pick up a new shiny one to play with and then place it on their shelf where I used to be. As my box tumbles into the trash, they say without a tear and without looking back “next.”
I do hope this isn’t true and that somehow I have added to their journey on this earth, as they added to mine.
And so I’m moving on refusing another box on another shelf and always hopeful this will be the last one that I am ever in.
Until Next Time,
Jill
