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Is it possible to cry someone out of your soul?

To recognize each tear as it trickles down your cheeks as the only remnants of a love you once knew?

It’s been said that we grieve to the extent to which we loved. I must have loved you with my heart and soul because right now I feel like I am being gutted from the inside.

It feels like every nerve ending that you touched when you grazed your fingers across my bare skin has been replaced with needles, and the pleasure I once used to feel at the thought of your caress now feels like a pain so deep that, if it were possible, I’d be bleeding from every pore of this body.

My chest caves in as I empty out what I think will be my final tear only to inhale and find another wellspring of fresh salty water being poured out from behind my eyes.

This wasn’t the kind of love that I signed up for when I met you.

I thought my heart would pound out of my chest the first time we hugged, and now I feel like I want to tear my sternum in half and crawl outside of this place I call my body just to escape the memory of you.

The problem with that is, I know that no matter how far I run, your soul is so intertwined with my own that escaping the confines of my flesh would only provide a temporary release at best. And so I am left, wondering if it’s possible to truly hate someone because it feels so much easier than loving you, or if I will always love you so deeply that I end up hating myself because of it. There seems to be no easy way out.

I’ve heard that we have to move through the heartache in order to move on, but I feel like I am trudging through the thickest, densest mud I have ever seen, and I am not properly equipped to navigate my way through it. There is a part of me that longs to turn around and go back, but I know you are no longer standing there, and so I’m left feeling defeated, saddened, and frustrated that I cannot seem to move a little faster.

Some days I feel like I can see the end in sight, but then something happens—a memory or your essence finds me, and I’m dragged back to the place I started. I wish I could say that each time it gets a little easier, but somehow it doesn’t, and I’m left wondering if my future will only be this endless cycle of trying to forget you.

I want to forget you.

I want to forget every beautiful moment I spent lying in your arms, breathing in your scent, and feeling the softness of your warm skin under my fingertips. I want to forget the laughs we shared, the growth we experienced, and all the ways that your presence brought a kind of magic into my life. I want to forget that when I looked into your eyes, I could have sworn I saw a piece of God staring back at me. I want to forget because it is evident that we did not share the same vision.

Your vision of me seems to be some misrepresentation of a love you never properly received when you were a child, and it is self-evident through the way you seemed to have no trouble saying goodbye that we were not actually ever on the same path, and perhaps, I had only been in love with some kind of an illusion. The issue I seem to be facing is that the illusion of you still messes with the reality that has set in, and so I grieve what I thought I had found in you.

I am making peace with the fact that perhaps the happy ending I believed was possible for me and you will now only be possible for one of us, and so I cry out the heavy feeling sitting in my heart that once held the lightness of you. I hope that someday this gets easier and that time will truly heal this worn and tattered heart of mine, but for now, I cry.

Maybe someday, I will have cried you out of my soul and the grief over the end of this love story will have subsided.

Maybe each memory of you that stains my cheeks as they fall out of my eyes will turn into beautiful poetry and a life that I can be proud of.

Until then, I’ll just keep taking one step at a time as I trudge along and find my way through. And maybe one day, I will have finally forgotten you.

~