Levels of Loss

Tonight I'm sitting on my screened-in back porch--alone, as usual--thinking about the women who lived in this house before me, also alone, for much longer than I've been here, alone. It's hard not to sympathize with their losses, especially Mary's, who lost not only a husband but 7 children as well. How did she go on with so much heartache? I know it was due to her faith, that she truly believed her love ones were in a better place... This has brought me to wonder....

We feel such sorrow for those who lose loved ones to death. How their hearts must bleed, to know they'll never--on this Earth--see those they loved again. How they must ache during those years of aloneness that follow the death--or deaths--of those they love! And yet...do we really stop to think how it must be even more terrible for someone to lose a love, not to death, but to lack of love? How do we go on, knowing the one we love doesn't love us anymore...doesn't want to share a life with us...would rather even sometimes be alone than with us? Do we blame ourselves unnecessarily? Of course we do...would we be human if we didn't? Surely if someone quits loving us, it must on some level be our fault? How could we think otherwise?

Divorce may not carry the stigma it once did, but I certainly don't think people comprehend the level of such a loss. They expect you to 'move on,' but how can you move on when the life you had is still back there, waiting to be reclaimed by the two people involved, if only one of them would come to his or her senses? The things we must grieve, the things we must lose, and not in one fell swoop as death so considerately grants, but little by little, one piece at a time. First, the constancy of your companion, then the love you once believed was everything, then the marriage itself, then time spent with your best friend, then every little day to day habit and routine, one bit at a time... You watch those things change from love, to ambivalence, and sometimes even to hate... Does anyone ask how we survive? No, they ask why we don't 'move on?'

I am trying to grasp the concept that suffering is a choice. That I don't have to hold true to this person I loved so much. That I can accept he didn't/doesn't love me and 'move on.' I try to want to believe it's easy, but for me, it isn't. I just want him to be the person he was, or pretended to be; I want to be loved again, all the while knowing we can't go back; all the while trying to believe there's a greater purpose in all that's happening. When will I see it? When will I know why I'm being ask to let all this go? Days, months, years? When?

Today, I have no answers. I have only tears...and loneliness...