Author: Susan McElhaney

I had one of those aha moments between my tears and fits of rage. When it all adds up to them not respecting you much or simply being bored with the story on the page, let them go.

But you love them, you say? Sure you do. It would be ridiculous to try to say you didn’t. But I say again, let them go. Truly it’s your only option. You don’t have to like it. You don’t have to pretend it doesn’t hurt. But one of three things is going to happen.

1. They will, in fact, find that perfect match – no hiccups, no baggage, no problems- just right! And they will realize – and you will also finally know – that you truly were the entire source of all their misery.

2. They will discover being alone and on their own is the best way to go – no one to answer to; no one counting on them, and no one to count on – footloose and fancy free with some no-strings attached sex on the side until they die. Total bliss – just as they thought. And you will know that you were truly holding them back from their happiness.

3. This one is a long shot – but they realize maybe you weren’t so bad. Maybe you were worth it after all. When they get out there among the men-haters, the women set in their ways and not willing to put up with an ounce of their bullshit, the bitter ones, the needy ones, the disloyal ones, the ones with little ones needing a father figure or the ones with grandkids who start calling them poppy or something. – just maybe they will look back to that page and think – I had it pretty good. And then you will know you and your love and years of commitment really were worth something.

My aha moment? Just let them go.

I’ve started my own mostly liquid diet: Protein shake, tea a few smarties, beer and pills to make me loopy. I’m gonna get skinny and addicted, so I can be selfish and not care who I hurt – and look good while I’m doing it.

I’d be better off a stranger than the person who sleeps in your bed and better off – off’d than someone who loved you like I did. You say it’s just how you are, and I guess I don’t understand. You knew how to show me love just long enough to get me where I am. And now it’s funny how you say you can’t be what I need, while I watch you be just that for anyone else but me. It leaves me numb, except for all the hurt – to finally come to terms with my true worth. So I’ve given all these years, and it’s come down to this – I was a convenience at the time and now – just an inconvenient circumstance.

Was it just an innocent smile that replaced years of laughter or an accidental touch that diminished our intimacy to this now forced response? Was it the freedom or just the way she “gets” you that reduced me to a passerby in our hallways?

Was it the thrill, the secrecy, the mystery?

Exactly what did it take to delete all the years I gave you – the love, the loyalty, my soul? Just what did it take to destroy us?

Leaving was more than I could bear, and coming back offered no resolve. This place, me, the salt water on my skin – how could I have gone when so much of me got stuck here, and so much of this place clung to my hopes, my promises and now my regrets?

A young couple, full of flirtatious spirit, catches my eye, so I watch them before I go (again). In this moment I can’t help but beg of life’s great interventions – Why did you take me from this place and this place from me?

I suppose we all have them – journeys and destinations we can’t shake. But we blink, and we kind of forget, because the forgetting helps us cope when the remembering hurts too much.

Drowned my pills,

drank at will,

said my prayers,

cursed that hill,

clawed my way

to another day,

begged to go,

cried to stay.

Lost in the noise of people living and the chaos of the breathing, we forget ourselves – all the passions, all the believing that feeds the dreamer and kills her at the same time. #poetryinmotion #mywritings