Cracks

The waiting broke me, and yet, it was all I could do. I had this implicit understanding that you can’t force life to happen, that you can’t will things into being, and you can never force someone to love you the same way you loved them.

Even as signs were clear, I refused to read them. I was in denial; it was the only place I could be. The last sanctuary of the broken and the defeated.

I had let you dictate everything, more than that I had let you define me, every aspect of me. Down to every nook and cranny, where I had stuffed little reminders of you, lest I forget. I must not forget.

I had finally understood why Gatsby kept reaching out to the green light. Man is born so utterly purposeless, that whatever he lets himself be defined by is all he would ever be. And like Jay Gatsby, I too was defined by my intense longing.

Increasingly, it was all that I was. Each layer of individuality shredded off me. I was not real; how could I be? I had no recollection of being anything other than in love with you. Your thoughts made me, shaped me, kept me together; whole. And I felt if I were to let them go, I would simply disperse. Where would I go? Where do imaginations go when abandoned by their creator?

So I held onto you, for dear life, I held on. I held on even as you moved further and further away, in every sense of the word. What dichotomy was it that I was everything you wanted, yet nothing you truly wanted?

I am broken, and I find my home among the broken and abandoned things. I realize now that is perfectly okay. The cracks are simply where your love touched me. I would not trade these cracks, ugly as they may be, I would not trade them. Because if damage is what comes to define me, I welcome it. As I welcome all your contradictions, your lies, and your truth. I am an amalgamation of everything you loved, everything you loved short of loving it enough.

And you do not get to choose your fate, you only get to see it unfold.