Stitching the Soul Page 2
in the things you feel,
especially the sad things.
Sadness was made
so the soul could learn to heal.
I am sorry that the sadness can be loud and disruptive. I am sorry that it can dictate your days and remind you of old wounds and the pain that always stays. But in the middle of the fight, I hope you notice small flowers growing in the cracks, reminding you that eventually all things return us to the light.
I knew my heart was healing when I stopped going to the places I thought you would be. I stopped getting coffee at your favorite café in the hopes you might be getting coffee too. I stopped driving the long way to work just because it passed by your house and I hoped you’d be out on the front lawn. I stopped going to the Italian restaurant down the street, thinking maybe you would be eating there for dinner. I stopped going to the bar in the city just to see if you were out drinking with friends. I thought maybe if we ran into each other, you would realize the mistake you made and we could be together again. But it wasn’t a mistake. You knew what you were doing. And while it took me a little while to catch up, I know it was the right thing too. We belong to different forevers. My heart and your heart were never meant to be together.
The flowers started to reappear in May, and all the snow began to melt away. I wondered where sadness went in the seasons it was not needed. I wondered where pain returned to after one ached for so long. And so I started to realize that grief never truly leaves us. It is often the things we do not wish to feel that are the best things to help us heal.
Grief really just wants to be loved. It hides in the corners of your soul that feel the most vulnerable. It dreams of a moment you will reach out your hands and let it be held. It gathers in the folds of your sheets and asks to be nurtured. Grief knows that ripping yourself apart isn’t going to heal the wounds. It is just an ache that needs a place to go. Grief is just a friend needing to be reminded it is not alone.
Somewhere in the world, someone is scribbling thoughts in their journal, wiping the snow off their front windshield, or throwing sticks to their dog on the beach. Somewhere, someone is having their first kiss, their first promotion, their first heartbreak. Maybe someone isn’t happy with their life or they want to change something about it. And that’s the beauty of it; at any given time, someone is living a life you could live too.
Sometimes the person you thought you needed really isn’t. So, you will try to justify all those reasons, and at 2 a.m. you will hope that that person may change. This is what breaks our soul. It breaks us to know that our heart is trying to accept what our mind has known all along. And so we continue, hoping we will wake up one day and that person really will be everything we needed. But life doesn’t happen this way. You can love someone more than you have loved anyone or anything in your whole life, but it doesn’t mean that person is what you need. Sometimes it’s the opposite. Sometimes that person is exactly what you don’t need.
You will have your heart broken by someone you trusted, and you will wonder what you did wrong. You will wonder if your broken heart will ever mend itself, if the holes and the cracks will ever seal themselves again. On the more difficult days, it won’t even be about the heartbreak itself; it will be about the way your heart was broken. It will feel as though you are the only person in the whole world to have felt such sadness, but you must remember that other people exist with broken hearts and carry on. You must learn that if we break our arm, it will never really heal to the way it was before. It will still hurt a little when the weather gets cold, but you continue to learn to stitch things together again. You continue to strengthen once more.
It’s not even cutting the thread that’s so painful, it’s all the memories that spill from the thread. How they tied us together, how they weaved stitches into our very soul. It’s not always that the person will no longer be there, it’s all the memories that stay—where do they all go?
My heart is a mess; my soul, empty. You walked into my life and made promises you could not keep. The way you drained the hope from my body and left holes in spaces that once felt so alive. Now I’m in a war, trying to stitch together broken pieces and scrubbing the memories from my skin. It’s enough to cry under my blankets and wonder why I let you in.
Two coffee cups sat on the table
side by side.
But they were empty,
drained.
Like our love,
it was all gone.
I want to close my soul,
turn off all the thoughts.
Because, lately, I can’t breathe.
We said we’d grow old together,
but now
I’m just frozen in time.
We had all these plans,
but now
the future isn’t so clear.
We said we’d be forever,
but you left,
and we ran out of time.
I am still trying to understand how we can think so highly of someone else and so little of ourselves. So, when it feels like every breath leaves a bruise and your hopes are set on the love returning, just know that I wish I could hold you when the darkness feels too great. I wish I could comfort you and remind you the sun will reappear. I wish you could see that all the scars are a reminder; you will survive the ache.
If you are looking for respect
tell yourself you are beautiful
every day in the mirror
If you are looking for the truth
remind yourself you are strong
every day out loud
If you are looking to be proud
remember you are not worthless
remember you are not weak
hold yourself piece by piece
If you are looking for hope
I am telling you that the road
always starts again
no matter how long
no matter how far
She will grow from the heartbreak. She will remember how she felt each night you said you’d stop by and never showed. She will smile, radiant when she meets someone new. And she will laugh; it will ring out and be heard for miles. More than that, she will carry herself differently, with confidence, around her this mesmerizing glow. And you’ll realize you don’t deserve her, because you were stupid enough to let her go.
So, it’s been a rough week. Too many storm clouds and people getting under your skin. Too many moments you felt the anger rage, so you have forgotten where to begin. And so you blame yourself for things always going wrong, because what’s happening to you couldn’t possibly be happening to someone else. It’s all your fault when life seems to be spiraling out of control.
Stop and breathe.
You do have time to breathe, so make time. Concentrate on the way your body feels when you are breathing in and out. How it rolls over your stomach, catches in your chest, and releases through your lips. A rough week is just a rough week. We all have them; we all blame ourselves when things go wrong. We can’t always control the moments that make us feel so alone. But we can control our breathing.
Just stop and breathe.
Some stories fit between pages of grief and despair, and others rise above the pages. They float under lights, swirling, ascending, transcending. Make a list of all the things you feel. I hope your soul finds relief.
I know how it hurts to be taken for granted. To lose everything you thought you wanted. If I were you, I’d put myself first. Take back all the things I wanted to do. If I were you, I’d take this as an opportunity to rise above it all. But I’m not you, and I can’t make choices for you. But I can listen and remind you that the things that make you ache aren’t always good for you.
The sunflowers in my garden
rose taller and taller
as the months went
on,
always reaching for the sun.
This is how you heal.
By always reaching for the light.
Forever isn’t always forever. Sometimes it is two weeks and you thought you had found the love of your life. Sometimes it is a handful of months and you moved in together, full of excitement for the future. Sometimes it is years and you built a home and created dreams together. It still feels the same when it ends. Loss isn’t always measured in how many seconds, days, or weeks you knew someone. Forever could have been packed into a dozen memories or spread out over a lifetime of moments; if it ends, the loss feels the same.
I look for you in the quietest hours of the night, hoping that your voice will whisper through the dark that you are still there. I reach for you in the earliest moments of the morning, hoping it had all been but a nightmare. I search for our love all through the day, wondering if you would only give me a sign, then perhaps you would return.
One day, grief wrote me a letter. It said, “All I’ve ever wanted is the best for you, for you to be patient when I am relentless.” It said, “I wanted to teach you to be compassionate, even in the moments when I don’t seem fair.” It said, “I wanted to remind you that it is impossible to live a life without me.” It said, “Sometimes I will be heavy; often I will be small; and other times, I will make you feel so empty, it will feel impossible not to fall.” And then it said, “I want you to know it is not because I don’t love you or that I don’t want you to win. It’s because I need you to know that without me, you wouldn’t let anything else in.”
If your soul is lonely
I’ve been missing you all this time, and I can’t see an end to all this loneliness. It hurts to watch as you love someone else while I still think about all the moments that used to be mine. I can’t keep the ache silent, not while I’m thinking about you after coffee or right before I sleep. We threw caution to the wind, went there when all our friends said not to. Maybe this is karma for not just turning the other way. But I was so lonely, and your smile made me forget all the words I wanted to say.
Loneliness isn’t always wanting to find romantic love. It can be wanting to find a friend. When all you want is someone to call, someone to get dinner with on a Friday night because you’re bored. Someone to laugh with, rely on, be on the same page with. Sometimes I don’t want a therapist to talk to; I just want a friend.
You broke me, and now I can’t feel a damn thing. I’m trying to convince myself the light is under all the scars. But I’m torn up, and it all hurts too much. The truth is, I never knew dancing with you would lead to this. I’m chasing someone who isn’t here anymore, a shadow of a love that walked out the door. I am so lonely, I don’t think I can take this anymore.
We’ve been sleeping
next to each other,
but we’re miles apart.
I know I need to say
goodbye,
but walking even a mile
on my own scares me.
The parts you struggle with
are the parts of you
that need the most love
The parts that feel so lost
are the parts of you
that need the most kindness
The parts that trouble you
are the parts of you
that make you the most brave
The moon continues to shine light even when she is quarter, half, or full. Even when the stars hide behind the clouds and she is shining lonely in the dark. She still shines. So, when you are near empty, remember your worth, because the universe always needs your light.
Listen to your soul,
how it calls your name
in the darkest hours of your life.
Your soul knows you better than anyone;
nurture it, find things that help it grow.
Find moments that make it whole.
One day, you will be someone who believes in yourself. You will conquer the thoughts of doubt and win the battle you face with your mirror. You will realize strength is not in the breaking or the falling but in the quieter moments when you look at how far you’ve come and how much you are healing.
The body will feel like a landslide in the middle of all the loneliness. You’ll feel the earth slipping away from you as you try to hold yourself together. But sometimes it’s better to let all the darkness slip away; and underneath the rubble, a new you will rise, full of hope and knowing all pastures are restorable.
The stars have seen so much of me: my first kiss, my first broken heart, my tears as I looked out into the quiet, still lake. How I need them more than ever, to shine light over me. But I know that eventually we have to face the things that make us afraid, even if those things are the aching, lonely pieces of ourselves.
The hurt leaves eventually. It may return from time to time to remind you of the lessons you learned. But one day, your chest won’t feel so heavily. You won’t feel exhausted just at the thought of putting on your shoes and starting another day.
Language is sometimes being able to speak what motivates someone else. It’s determining what they are passionate about, what gives them hope, what doesn’t make them feel so alone, what they live for.
Losing is never easy. You lose a game, a lover, a piece of you. It takes grace and humility to claw your way back. But when you experience loss, you experience the determination for better days. And determination is a very powerful thing.
You should start with the way you want to feel. If you want to feel alive, feel capable, feel courage. Once you start with yourself, you can handle the rest.
They call it the lonely hours, when everyone is asleep but you’re awake, wondering if they’ll stop by before the sun rises. But if they were worth it, they’d already be next to you, and it wouldn’t be called the lonely hours.
“I wish you the best”
were the last words I ever said to her
and it’s taken me all this time
to mean them
It’s about learning to find the comfort in all the quiet. To finding bravery in being by yourself, to mending the ache with kindness to your heart and forgiving yourself on the days you fall apart. It’s about knowing, for all the lonely days with this struggle, there are days full of hope coming.
I poured myself into you
every dream and every hope
And yet you walked away
the minute I needed help
You can’t always see someone who is struggling. Sometimes it’s obvious, like when his eyes are red, and the bottle of whiskey is half empty. Or maybe she’s on the train and she bursts into tears. But other times it’s quiet, like when he won’t smile or speak for weeks, locking himself in his room; or she hides behind books in the library, trying to find the one that promises, again she will bloom. Whether loud or quiet, strange or familiar, be kind to other people’s struggles. Underneath all the mess, they are waiting for hope. They are waiting for a happy ending to their stories. Be hope to somebody.
I hope the younger you would be proud of the struggles you’ve survived and the twists and turns you’ve overcome. I hope the younger you knows the battles you’ve won and the lessons you’ve learned. You’ve made it this far; be proud of who you are.
You are going to meet someone, and you’ll count all the moments until you get to see them again. More than that, they’ll remind you why your heart had to break and bend before you found a love too pure to comprehend.
It is your right to create safe spaces for yourself. No matter how much you want to fix or save someone, you cannot compete with toxicity. People who are no good for us have ways of pretending they are. But life is not meant for pretending; it’s too short for such long moments of struggling. As hard as it may be to let go, you have to move to safer grounds.
Ever After
You don’t have to settle for familiarity or continue with old habits. You don’t have to be the second choice, or the leftovers, or the one who is always just there. You deserve to be what someone has always dreamt of, someone who lights up every room, someone who is cared for, cherished, held the way the sky holds the moon. You deserve someone who will look at you and say, “I’m so lucky.”
You deserve to be an ever after.
But I’m human
and you’re human
and sometimes
we get drunk
on our own loneliness
and forget
we have the power to heal.
She just wants someone to spend Friday nights with, someone who will let her dance the night away and come home with her. She just wants someone to fill all the lonely space, who reminds her life isn’t a race but a home to build and a purpose to fulfill. She just wants someone who will make the effort, love all her flaws, support her through it all.