Loss

It's not happening, between the boy and I. He's not ready. And I need someone to share my life with. But I feel utterly disappointed. I knew it might end this way but I really wish it hadn't because, for the first time in forever, I felt comfortable. I thought he was feeling comfortable enough with me to see where this might’ve went. I had the naivety to feel optimistic about the future. Alas, now, I miss him and I will miss what could’ve been. Part of me regrets closing the door but I know that what he was proposing would have just made me sad.

Love fights loneliness. And I’m so tired of being so endlessly alone. I need to believe that there will be a guy who will want to share their life with me. A guy whom I’d want to be with in return. It seems like an almost insurmountable challenge, one that only gets harder with every passing year. Taking these losses in some sense becomes easier through time, but it gets harder and harder to imagine the life I dream of.

Despite losing my mum to cancer almost two months ago, and despite the rollercoaster of sorts over the last month, I need to look at this all with some degree of perspective. A high school friend, Chris, very recently lost his wife, only a few weeks after getting married. That’s true tragedy. I can’t begin to imagine what that feels like. It’s been years since I crossed his path but I’ve thought about him a fair bit since learning the news. He had love. Now he’s got to use that in some way to get him through.

I think the loss of my mum has had quite an effect on Yvie. I think she’s started to follow in my mum’s footsteps by hillwalking with Lennox. It’s a great thing to see, and it’s amazing that they have each other. It reminds of the travel and the time we’d all have spent as a family when I was a kid. I remember us being a happy family before everything changed. I must’ve been about 14 when my parents split and that defined the rest of my teenage years. It defined — or, perhaps more accurately undefined — my relationship with my parents. I tried, but didn’t try hard enough, to rebuild that relationship with my mum and I’d always thought, hoped, that if I could go back to Edinburgh happy then I could start properly sharing my life with her. I never found that happiness and she never found the cure.

It is possible to run out of time. In any regard, in every regard. It’s possible to never achieve things you always thought you would. It’s possible to ignore your chances and fail to comprehend things at the time which in retrospect turn out to be defining moments. It’s possible to let good things slide away from you and it’s possible you’ll never get the chance again.

It’s also possible to keep hope in sight. To keep fighting and to keep being optimistic. To take chances and be unafraid.